I recently did a post about how, for me, Google Reader is still the best RSS app for the iPhone, even though it’s a web app. I’d really like to see a top-notch native RSS app though – so I’ve been looking at several contenders in this area recently.
smartRSS 2 is one of these, and a very promising sounding one. Its App Store page describes it as ‘the most advanced RSS reader for the iPhone … More than 16 integrated features.’ The app’s feature list includes some innovative ideas, but also, unfortunately, some false claims.
What Does It Do?
smartRSS 2 is a native RSS reader app – which means it helps you manage and keep up with your feed subscriptions to all your favorite sites. Here are some of those features that were mentioned above:
A 3D Touch viewer
The Super Menu (two screen touches to access all features)
Super fast optimized update sequence
A community feed directory
Search and add feeds by website or feed URL
Dual way Google Reader synchronization
Import of .opml files via WiFi
Landscape or portrait article reading
An integrated web browser
Top News – browse through the most popular articles
What Does It Do Well?
smartRSS does offer a couple of unique features – one that is very impressive, one that has pure novelty value and very little (if any) real usefulness.
The impressive – and easily the best – feature in this app is the ‘Super Menu’. This is located in the top right corner of all the app’s screens, and occupies very little screen space. When you tap it, you get a pull-down menu of all the commands relevant to where you are within the program. On the main Feeds screen you’ll get ‘Refresh All’, ‘Mark all as read’, and ‘Add new feed’, for instance.
Tap once to see the menu, and once to hide it away again – or just tap somewhere else on the screen, and it will auto-hide itself. This menu is very well done, and excellent to work with.
Another great feature of smartRSS is that you can add feeds by searching for them, and not just by URL, but also by web site name. If you’ve ever tried to add a feed manually via its full URL, without the ability to copy and paste of course, you know that it is not fun. smartRSS lets you search by name alone – so just type ‘Engadget’ – or better yet ‘Just Another iPhone Blog’ and you’ll get good results …
Once you see those results, it’s just two taps (one to select, one to confirm) to have a feed added to your subscriptions.
Updates happen pretty quickly in this app, at least with a limited number of feeds. I’ve currently got 18 feeds in it and find that updates can happen smoothly while I’m doing other things – adding a new feed or reading an article, for example.
smartRSS’ inline browser is quite nice too. It shows you as much of each article as the originating feed allows, and renders photos and graphics as well as text quite nicely.
What’s Not So Good?
Or in the case of this app, not good at all. smartRSS has so much promise, but is ultimately a big disappointment, for a few reasons. The first of those is false promises made in its features list – such as:
‘Dual way Google Reader synchronization’ – Not even close to the truth. This just does not work, at all. I have entered my Reader credentials, and they’re checked and confirmed. I see no errors at all, but absolutely nothing happens in this area. No Google Reader feeds have ever been pulled in during weeks of using this program, and after multiple uninstalls and reinstalls. The app’s review page is chock full of others who also say it does not work at all. I have submitted a support request to the developers on this three times, the first one no less than 19 days ago. I have received ZERO response, not even an automatic acknowledgement type email.
‘Import of OPML files through WiFi’ – Again, this just doesn’t work. I subscribe to a good number of feeds (around 200) but not a massive number. This process appeared to work for a few moments, but has consistently imported less than 10 feeds out of my 200.
The 3D Touch viewer is another unique feature, but in this case one that I find almost entirely useless. It lets you see feed items in a landscape view, and apply your choice of theme / background to them. But … you have no control over which feeds it displays, or ability to just select one for instance. And it displays very little text on each screen. Basically, it is meant to look cool (which it doesn’t really) but it’s not practical at all.
For a program that wants to talk about Google Reader sync among its top features, it is ironic that its community features are all based around its own community. The ‘Top News’ section is populated with what its own readers are bookmarking or sharing etc – and when you use it, your stuff is automatically roped into this. Even if I wasn’t a heavy Google Reader user, I would be far more interested in seeing / making use of the popular shares from an established, massive community like Reader has, not a brand new community based around an app that may have sold only a few hundred or thousand copies.
Overall
If you use Google Reader and want *any* level of sync / integration with it, then two words sum it up here: Forget It.
If you don’t use or plan to use Google Reader and you don’t have very many feeds that you follow (few enough to be happy adding them manually rather than via OPML import etc) this *could* be a very good native RSS app option. It could be if it appeared to be an ongoing, properly supported program.
Based on my experience of having zero response to multiple support requests, and the massive number of complaints in the app’s reviews section, and no updates to the app – I have to conclude that this app is no longer supported or viable. Especially since it is not produced by a one-person outfit, but by a company called Visualmobile that has several apps in the App Store, and some high-faluting titles on its web site’s ‘About’ page …
The blog on the company’s site even has a new post from this week talking about a new app they are re-submitting to Apple soon. My thought = update your existing apps, make them work and come somewhere close to living up to their claimed feature set, before you go talking about new ones!
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