Sky News Review

The Sky Empire is a global media powerhouse, with its fingers in plenty of pies worldwide. Given the company’s position at the cutting edge of the multimedia revolution it’s hardly surprising to discover that it has created an app for the iPhone which offers the latest news at your fingertips.

Given the fast-paced nature of such vital information it’s pleasing to note that the Sky News app is blisteringly efficient, with the maximum loading time never stretching beyond a couple of seconds. The design of the program has been kept minimal to ensure that you’re never sat starting at a blank screen as various pretty yet pointless visuals are downloaded.

Each new article comes with an image and a few paragraphs of text. Many stories also contain a video summary, should you wish to investigate the feature a little more closely.

The news on offer is divided into several categories, including World News, Sport, Business and Showbiz. Sadly, technology isn’t included as a category, but obviously this could change in the future.

If you’re too lazy to read words then you can opt to see the day’s breaking stories in video format. This portion of the site is divided into Top Stores, Showbiz and Weather.

To be honest the video playback is a little underwhelming – loading times are protracted when compared with the swiftness displayed elsewhere in the app, and to be honest most of the salient information is already on display in the text-based news stories.

The remaining sections of Sky News seem to be geared up to benefit Sky rather than the end user. You can choose to enable text message alerts (you’re charged for each message) or submit your own news stories, which is a neat way for the supplier to grab a few easy tips on breaking news items.

To supplement this, the app is also populated by adverts, which have a habit of popping up at the bottom of the screen. Given that the app is currently being offered free of charge one can’t grumble about this too much, but it does become annoying when you’re reading a story and the text is obscured by a promotion for another Sky-related service or product.

Still, such quibbles are relatively easy to dismiss when you consider how streamlined and intuitive Sky News is. Stories are updated regularly and there’s a good mixture of content (although it does veer towards the trashy at times). If you’re keen to keep abreast of current events and begrudge having to pay for a newspaper each day, then this is well worth a spin.