iPhone App: USA Today

January 17th, 2009

= 4 stars

The USA Today iPhone App basically provides the news contained in the USA Today newspaper on your iPhone.

The Good

News articles are organized in several sections accessible via the top menu bar: Top News, News, Money, Sports, Life, Tech, Travel. There are other information categories accessible via icons at the bottom: Headlines, Scores, Weather, Pictures, and Snapshots. It’s all well organized and doesn’t take long to figure out.
Sports scores are organized by league. Games are listed in a concise manner with the teams, scores, amount of time left in the game if in progress, and even each team’s logo. This will make being out-and-about and curious about a game score not much of an issue anymore.
Weather gives a five day forecast based on location, along with radar and maps provided by The Weather Channel. The weather for your current location appears in the upper right corner. You set your location preferences by clicking the info icon in the lower left corner.
Pictures contains photographs and captions that you can flip through using the touch screen.
Snapshots has easy-to-read informational charts and interactive polls that you can vote in via the iPhone. It seems you have to let the app use your location for your vote to register, The payoff: after voting you get to see poll results overall, for your state, and even your city.
More stable and faster than the other newspaper app, NY Times.

The Bad

The menu bar on the initial screen cuts off “Lifestyle” on the far right. It took me a while to realize you can scroll the menu bar by pressing and holding on a section title. Seems like the arrows should just be clickable to get the menu bar to scroll.
No landscape view when tilting the iPhone horizontally. This would also allow for a wider menu bar.

Conclusion

Say what you will about the generic quality of USA Today’s news – they built a surprisingly solid iPhone App. Plus, it’s available for an awesome price: free. Definitely give it a try.

iTunes App Store Link: