A few weeks ago an official BBC News app finally hit the Android Market, but at the time you could only download the app if you happened to be in the UK. Now the BBC Worldwide team has launched a global version of the news app.
You can use BBC News for Android to read the latest news, listen to radio stories, or watch videos from your Android phone. You can also listen to live radio programs using the app.
The BBC News app doesn’t currently support tablets running Google Android 3.x Honeycomb, and to be honest it’s not really optimized for tablets running Android 2.x either. I took it for a spin on an HTC Flyer tablet and while it looked pretty decent in portrait mode, there’s no landscape mode at all.
When you fire up the app you’re greeted with a series of photos and headlines for the top stories followed by the latest news in a number of categories. You can customize the home screen by clicking the Edit button and choosing just the topics you’re interested in. There’s also a bar at the top of the screen which shows the latest headlines, as well as an advertising bar at the bottom of the screen. The advertising is probably the key difference between the UK and international versions of the app. British residents pay a license fee that supports the BBC, so they get an ad-free version at no charge.
via Android Police
Not compatible with Xoom :(
It’s not compatible with any tablet running Android 3.x yet. It works on the HTC Flyer with Android 2.3, but honestly, the UI looks crowded on the high resolution display. The BBC News app was clearly designed for 800 x 480 pixel and lower resolution devices.