This review originally appeared within iLounge’s iOS Gems series within the compilation article, iPhone Gems: Every RSS Reader, Reviewed. Additional details may be found in the original article.
As a simple RSS reader, azRSS NewsReader ($2) falls short of the competition due to a questionable interface and a lack of common, user-friendly features. The app’s main screen lists subscribed feeds along with a “Feeds Directoy” containing roughly 45 different feeds which the user can choose to subscribe to; users may also add individual feeds.
The app lacks any sort of feed auto-detection, meaning that users wanting to add feeds not listed in the directory need to remember and type in the complete feed URL (including “http://”), or the app will bring up an invalid URL error. The app’s interface is neither pretty nor offensive, but simply okay.
Tapping on a subscribed feed brings the user to the Articles view, where each item is listed with its title and a star for unread or a checkmark for read items; there is no way to mark all unread, or to mark previously-read items as unread. The individual item view page is plain, with text presented in a reasonably-sized serif font.
Links clicked from within this view open in the app’s built-in browser. Limited by its inability to automatically find feed URLs, lack of syncing, lack of a flagging option, and hampered by relatively infrequent but still annoying crashes, azRSS would be hard-pressed to garner a recommendation even at the free price level. The addition of any of the above features would help improve this app, which at $2 falls well short of our recommendation.
