Dr. News is an Android app that has a lot on offer for those looking to get their hands on the latest news from the greatest sources available online. With Dr. News, users can go ahead and choose their favorite topics, as well as subscribe to their favorite publications, and even save stories to view offline, too. It all comes together in a slick, good-looking app that works well and takes just a few taps to get the news they want. Other features such as text mode help users read news on the go, even on the slowest networks, or just to save data in their allowance. With lots of different categories and a simple interface, let’s see what Dr. News has to offer.
Those looking to get a new kind of news app on their phone, can download Dr. News from the Play Store and then load it up. There’s a simple setup to go through, which goes to show off the neat UI.
There appears to be only three regions that users can choose from when using Dr. News, those being India, the United States and a generic “Global” option.
While it would have been nice to see more of these regions available, it’s not too much of a big deal, and having less regions means that there’s more chance of better curation when it comes to the sources and such. Once a user has chosen their preferred region, the app will go ahead and launch, giving users a look at some of the latest news.
These are broken in to different categories, with the “Hot” section presumably made up of trending news stories that are popular right now. Users can change categories at the top of the display, and if they want to, they can swap and change the categories that the app brings together for them.
Looking at the different sections, it’s clear that there has been some thought into the sort of sources that Dr. News is using, as well as which articles are put into these different categories. As we can see here with the gaming category, nothing appears to be out of place.
There are some ads in between the stories found in each category, but this is no worse than other apps, and it’s simple to scroll past them, too.
The article view within Dr. News is good-looking, and rather than opening things up in a Chrome tab or your default browser, it does so within the Dr. News app itself, in a sort of in-app browser. This is all fine and well, but there’s no option to open this inside of Chrome, and there options within this view are fairly limited, giving users little more than a share option.
When reading an article within this view, users are given the choice of subscribing, which gives them the opportunity to subscribe to a certain specific news source.
When users have subscribed to a source, they can then see all the articles from that source in the subscribed section. Here, we’ve only subscribed to one source, but this shows the functionality of this feature pretty well.
Other media is included here, such as a video section, which filters out other stories to just show those with videos, and the same can be done with images as well, but this isn’t quite as effective.
For those that are using a slower connection, there’s the text mode, which gives users the news but just the text rather than all of the images and graphics in order to speed up the loading of the pages, as well as display just the news, with no distractions. Users can also save articles to read offline, too. Both of these features will help those looking to get their news fix quicker, no matter where they are.
There are lots of different news apps available for Android, and that’s not much of a secret these days. We’re spoilt for choice, and while Dr. News might not be the most fully-featured news app out there, it’s the sort of thing that nicely balances different features with a simple and good-looking interface. Things look good here and the theme is consistent throughout, ensuring that users know how to use the app no matter when it is they’re using it. Content looks good when people are reading, and there’s a very consistent approach to everything. Features such as the text mode and offline mode are worked in well, and accessible for those that might not know too much about these sort of apps. Regardless of their background, everything runs well here, and there’s little to complain about overall, making this is a great app for people to give a try, especially if the heavier and more fully-featured apps aren’t ticking the right boxes for them.
Ratings
- Speed (4/5) – Dr. News runs well, and it doesn’t ever feel sluggish when loading articles and in some cases will save users a lot of time with the text mode and such.
- Theme (4/5) – The yellow and white theme of the app is something that might not appeal to everyone, but it looks good and is consistent throughout, giving Dr. News a polished look and feel. It also gets out of the way to let the content itself shine.
- Features (4/5) – Everything works well in Dr. News and there’s little to worry about when it comes to using the app or anything like that. With a text mode, an offline reading mode as well as a clean interface, Dr. News has a good balance of features.
- Overall (4/5) – Ticking the majority of the right boxes, Dr. News is only really missing the addition of more regions and perhaps more news sources, but has everything else ready to go for anyone looking for another news app.
Pros
- Loads quickly, takes no time to get up and running and offers users a clean and good-looking interface.
- Lots of different news sources on offer, giving users a wide variety of categories and such to work with.
- Images and Video mode allows users to get straight to the media, rather than having to scroll through text in order to get to what they want.
- Allows users to subscribe to particular news sources that they enjoy, making it easier to get to their favorite coverage.
Cons
- Only allows for India and United States readers, the third option is a global one, and very broad as a result.
- Might be too simple and straightforward for some users.
All-in-all, there’s a lot to be happy about when using Dr. News, as it looks good, runs well and above all allows users to get to the news they want in little to no time at all. Giving users simple, straightforward options on what they want to read, as well as how to read it, Dr. News is well worth looking into, and it doesn’t ask for any payment, and only presents tasteful ads, too.