Sky News

 Onscreen graphics, breaking nows ticker tape and red button interactivity, it's all here! 

   Superior current affairs app that has plenty of hard news but has an impressive lightness of touch.



Free Slick reporting from the satellite giant 

If there is one thing that Sky News brings to TV it is polish. Watching the channel is like watching a piece of the future - onscreen graphics, a ticker-tape of breaking news, red button interactivity, the whole thing is like some sort of freakish playground for news hounds.

The less said about the politically slanted news angles the better, but the sheer amount of gloss on show always impresses.

With this in mind, there's no surprise that the Sky News app for Android is one of the slickest-looking apps around, offering one-touch coverage of myriad news stories around the world.
     

The first thing you notice when you load it up - it's a mere 886k as well which is a bonus - is the stunning speed of the thing.
    

Load the app up and it takes seconds before you are into a story - complete with big, bright picture and text that's hyper-linked, so you can follow it on to other parts of the app if you so wish.

There's a number of ways you can explore the app. We found it best to use the categories located at the top of the page, which are split into Top News, World News and UK news. If you use your thumb to flick the screen to the right, then there are more categories to drill deeper into. The app makes g-eat use of
multimedia. For example, if a story has a video in it, then it will have a little 'play' symbol on its picture thumbnail.The videos on show are clear, just view them through a Wi-Fi connection as they will eat through your 3G data usage.

The app also acts as a conduit to bring you closer to the action. There's a dedicated section for your own citizen journalism. While this takes up prime space on the app, we think it is a touch unnecessary but
The first thing you notice about the Sky News app when you load it up is the stunning speed of the thing
essential for those who want to report on the world around them. There's also dedicated sections for blogs and forums.

The ticker-tape of categories at the top of the Sky News app shows you just how much content there is to consume. We're hoping that when the BBC launches its official Android applications, it will look and act a little like this.

News apps are 10-a-penny on Android but Sky seems to have nailed it with this functional and fun to use option.