7 Most Groundbreaking Apps For Breaking News Junkies

Perhaps no market has more completely unique apps than the news category. There are so many different news apps for iPhone that it can be overwhelming to find good ones so today I’m making it easy. Ten unique tried-and-tested apps that will get you the news you want.

1. Google Currents (free): Google Current is basically a personalized newspaper app. Currents has thousands of “channels” from publishers like Engadget, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes than can be added to your home screen. Even we have a channel (subscribe to it). Once you’ve added your favorite channels, you can go to you home screen where all of your channels are displayed as well as some featured articles. You can also sort articles directly by channel. It has a fantastic built-in reading environment which makes it a pleasure to use, and of course it’s free.
2. Instapaper ($4): How many times have you started an article somewhere, not had time to finish it, and never found it again? How about when you want to read web articles while on a plane without Wifi? What about times that you’ve needed an article to troubleshoot a problem, and by the time the problem came back, you lost the article? Instapaper is just for those scenarios. Instapaper allows you to save any article you find on the web, and read them from any device (even offline). I use it whenever I’m going on a plane. I download about five articles that are stored onto my device while I read them and deleted when I’m done. Even better– the ones that I don’t read are saved online so that I can read them later. This app is a travelling necessity.
3. Summly (free): If you’ve seen Windows’ Metro User interface and tiles, you’ll recognize the basic layout of Summly. On the home page, sections are laid out in stacked “live titles” that display headlines for each category. Tiles can be updated simply by dragging, and the whole interface is navigated through swiping which gives it a very smooth feel. Categories have a curated collection of sources like blogs and magazines which provide stories, and they can be turned individually on or off. When you tap into a story, summly gives you a smartly generated “Sum”mary of the article which gives you a good idea of the story without even having to read the whole thing.
4. TED (Free): It’s not really news, but more of a current events app. TED gives you access to audio and video recordings of talks by some of Today’s finest thinkers. Tons of really smart people have done TED talks on subjects like healthcare, technology, and innovation. If you want to learn what’s going on in the world in a broader sense, TED is the place to do it.
5. CNN (Free): Of all of the specific news organizations out there, CNN has always been on the cutting edge, and the latest iteration of their iPhone app is no exception. The app is extremely easy to navigate with handy circular design elements and integrated gestures, and you can even watch CNN live. It also gets a lot of “cred” for a wide variety of articles and offline viewing, along with their push notifications which always fill me in when major news happens (even tragedies like Sandy Hook which so devastated me).
6. Pressreader (price varies): Think of Pressreader as the Netflix of News. They have thousands of full publications available for free to monthly subscribers, including big ones like USA Today and the Washington Post. This isn’t even some crappy mobile version of the paper. It’s the full newspaper/magazine as you would see in print, except that if you tap an article in the paper, the article is reformatted into a more ereader friendly format (although monthly rates are insanely expensive). It’s very cool, but for a price.
7. Twitter (Free): You’ve most likely heard of Twitter, but as a social network and not a news source. Twitter is the finest news source there is. It’s the most rapid way that news is spread. Millions of writers post links to their articles which can be easily found via search. Twitter even unveiled “stories” in their discovery section which personalizes popular News Articles for you. Honestly, Twitter is the best news aggregator there is.
8. Snackr (free): Why not include Snackr in the main list? For some reason I’m working on finding out, it’s been off the app store for a bit. Hopefully it will be back, but Snackr was one of my favorite iPhone apps. It turns your social data and RSS feeds into an audio newscast of sorts that allows you to listen to your news while you’re on the move. It’s great for news junkies who run, or drive to work.  Hopefully it will be back up soon.

We’re at an incredible point where we can know about just about any news story around the world in seconds, and hopefully these apps will help you stay current on the news you want to here.