The Verge

Summary

Joshua Topolsky and whole slew of the team left Endgadget.com in order to set up a new project, and the tech world waited with baited breath to see what those dudes would come out with. The result: The Verge, an English language tech news site that looks like a contemporary magazine. Quite a few of us over here at AndroidPIT are avid readers, and so we thought we'd review the mobile app for you. Find out what we make of it in our test below.

Test device: Samsung Galaxy S3
Android version: 4.0.4
Root: Yes
Modifications: None

Start up the The Verge app and the first thing you will see is all the most recent news stories. The overview lists a few details such as the title and author of a given article.
A big banner displays the top stories, and at the bottom of the display you'll see further options for stories, reviews and features.

Set up (or log into) a Verge account in order to create “storystreams”, a sort of personalised feed of articles that might interest you.

What's missing IMO is a search function. This is a key feature I no longer want to do without, and while having a chronological display of articles and features is all very nice, I want to be able to search for stuff specifically, dammit!

On the bright side: articles themselves are nicely set up and laid out. Even image heavy articles are easy to follow and read. That said, there's no option for enlarging the text or images, which is bad news for users of low-res smartphones.

While you may view existing comments, you can't chime into the conversation yourself unless you've logged in within the app. Power users will be happy to know that even unread comments can be commented on as read.

As is the case with many news readers, there are various options for sharing The Verge articles.

Another feature includes videos, photos and podcasts to help you keep informed on all the most recent developments, and the design here is great.

Finally, I just want to mention that The Verge is, in my humble opinion, in part responsible for increasing the quality of tech blogs in general. Their articles are well written but not sensational, their photos are excellent quality and the same goes double for their videos and shows such as “On The Verge” are great entertainment value. Honk if you're with me on this!

Bottom line:

The Verge provides users with a fun little app which, for the moment, is still missing a few features. Overall we are very happy with this app and can whole heartedly recommend it to all of our tech geek community members out there. Happy reading!

The Verge is known for good graphic rendition and I'm pleased to report that the mobile app doesn't disappoint. It may not look like a typical Android app but it stays true to the website's design, making regular readers feel “at home”.

Controls are great: easy and intuitive.
 

A downside is clearly the news lists are not very smooth, lagging here and there. Articles, on the other hand, can be scrolled through very fluidly.

The Verge crashed once during our test run, and this was when the server was experiencing difficulties. The app doesn't seem to be able to handle time out issues.

The Verge is free and can be found in Google Play. Ad banners are relatively small and non intrusive.