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BuzzBox News RSS/Google Reader
Tested version: 2.1
Latest version: 2.1
Requires Android: from 1.5
Summary
I’ve been an avid Google Reader user for quite some time now. Despite my overall satisfaction with the performance of this official Android App, I am still on the lookout for newer and better news apps with Google Reader access. With BuzzBox News RSS/Google Reader, the Google Reader integration is only a bonus feature. Find out what the rest of the app is about in today’s test report.
Features & Use
In a nutshell, BuzzBox News RSS/Google Reader is an app that features a large selection of RSS Feeds from which you can pick and choose your own customized reading list. A wide variety of news sources are available:
Us news
Politics
Tech
Celeb
World news
Business
Sports
Health
Gaming
Local
Others
If your news source is not included in any of these categories, you can add them manually to BuzzBox. Unfortunately, manually added RSS Feeds do not work as well as the ones included with the app. More often than not BuzzBox fails to categorize your own RSS feeds, placing them in the wrong category. Arranging your RSS feeds in the right categories cannot be done manually, so you’ll just have to bear with it. Moreovre, the Buzz rating system appears to only be working with BuzzBox news feeds.
For those of you looking to use BuzzBox to add or import your own RSS/Google Reader feeds: don’tt fall into despair just yet! BuzzBox does let you organize your feeds according to:
- Top Stories
- All Stories
- By Categories
- By Sources
- My Favorites
As already mentioned, BuzzBox features Google Reader Integration. Your feeds can only be imported, but it seemed to work perfectly during our test.
Another useful feature is the BuzzBox account, which allows you to access your personal feeds from both your app and computer. An account gets you access to all your favorite BuzzBox news.
BuzzBox allows includes a real-time search function that lets you search your feeds and the web for particular news subjects. Aside from that, with the help of keyboards BuzzBox can filter out all the news that’s relevant to you.
BuzzBox also includes a set of four large widgets that can be placed on your home screen. Finally, Buzzbox can notify you about breaking news in your notification bar. As far as looks are concerned, there are several different themes for the user interface.
Pressing the “download entire text” button lets you read an entire article without having to open up the article in your browser. Based on personal experience, BuzzBox failed to display the entire article half of the time, leaving me staring at a blank screen with an error message. Articles from the New York Times, BBC and other news sources appeared as either jumbled text or could not be displayed at all. Given the fact that this feature is still in beta status, I’m hoping the problem will be eliminated with the next update.
As expected, you can share your feeds via Twitter, Facebook, Email, SMS and MMS as well as add them to your own favorites.
Bottom Line:
It’s hard for me to give BuzzBox a final rating. On the one hand, BuzzBox does a great job of aggregating all your news feeds in one place. On the other hand, it often fails to display news feeds correctly (especially ones that are added manually). I’m going to have to go with 3 stars on this one.
Screen & Controls
After you start up BuzzBox News RSS/Google Reader for the first time, you are shown a screen with the usual categories. At the top, you’ll find a search field where you can enter in keywords.
In order to add news feeds, go to My Sources at the bottom left. Then click on Add Sources to view the large selection of news feeds. Press the menu button and then Google Reader Import in order to import all your subscribed feeds. There you can also choose whether you would like to view all feeds or only the top stories.
It’s up to you to determine after which Buzz rating something should be considered a “top story”. Notifications for top news stories can also be enabled or disabled according to your liking.
Once you’ve opened up a piece of news, you can swipe down to read on or press the skip button at the bottom. That’s also where you’ll find the share, my favorites, and bookmark buttons. You can adjust the text size by using the zoom feature hidden behind the menu button. If you can’t read the entire article, you can press a link that redirects you to a website.
In the Settings, you’ll find the following options:
Look and Feel
Reading Options
News Updates
Keywords Notification
Updates Rate
Popular Stories Notification
Notification Preferences
Storage Limit
Bottom Line:
For those of you looking for an efficient Newsreader App, BuzzBox is really simple to use. The look and feel of the app makes a neat and professional impression.
Speed & Stability
BuzzBox News RSS/Google Reader was both fast and smooth. All articles load quickly and without any hassle.
Price/Performance Ratio
BuzzBox News RSS/Google Reader can be downloaded for free from the Android Market. For those of you wishing to get rid of the ad banners, you can choose to purchase the BuzzBox News Contribution (€ 2.25 or about $3.07) to make them go away.
Reviews of this app in other languages
Review "BuzzBox News RSS/Google Reader" from Jan 25, 2011 (German)
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Thanks! I already have it, but I was just disappointed on not being able to have all my news sources in one place.
Have you tried beyondpod? One of my top apps, it also doubles as my podcatcher.
No, I haven't given it a try. It looks like mainly a podcast app. Does it work really well with RSS feeds as well?
It's great if it can do both.
Yes i only use this app to do both jobs. you can assign multiple catagories to each feed so I have all my rss feeds in an rss catagory so i hit the tab and the rss feeds are in one list - easier to do than to describe it appears :o)
A neat feature is that you can set podcasts to only download on wifi whilst the rss can update over data. These can also be set to seperate schedules easily (eg. my podcasts automatically download overnight and rss at intervals through the day)
I just tried out the app and it's pretty good. The only thing is that it doesn't let you load and view entire articles (as far as I could tell). All you can read is the headlines. BuzzBox allows you to view the entire text (though it doesn't work with all feeds).
Tell me if I'm getting something wrong here.
Not sure, I have some feeds that give me the whole text, but many just give a short summary. I had assumed that this was due to the original feed formatting. There are options for formatting and also to sync with google reader in the feed settings but ive never used them.
I just had a quick look and the world icon on the bottom row of each rss article is a direct link to the full webpage article, is that what you meant?
Yeah, that sounds right. I had the same problem with the BBC on BuzzBox, which must mean that there is something special about the formatting they are using.
Ideally, I would like to be able to read the full article on the screen without having to open up and read the article in the browser.
It's sort of hit or miss with these things - some articles display in full others don't.
Tweeking with the settings didn't help me change that.
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Peter Long
this is the only news app I use on a daily basis.
Yan, if you can't read NY Times using BuzzBox try downloading the NY Times App. It's much better.