Windows Phone RSS News Reader - Weave

Introduction
One of the advantages of a smartphone is that when you are waiting for the train you can read the latest news  without buying a newspaper! There are of course a lot of ways to read news, there are dedicated apps such as the CNN, Sky News and the excellent Engadget app for all your gadget and techie news. You can also browse to the mobile version of websites and pin them to your Start screen - that works but maybe you want to be a bit frugal with your data network usage? It's not the fastest way to read news either...

RSS (or Atom) news feeds let you download a bit-size portion of news stories. You get to read the first paragraph or so and decide whether you want to read the rest. There are a huge number of different RSS apps for Windows Phone, many are free. I've tied a few and here I'd like to talk about my favourite so far.

Many web sites have the RSS feeds (the orange icon opposite). You just have to copy the RSS URL and paste it into your RSS reader.

Weave News Reader
I've been using Weave for a few weeks on my Nokia Lumia 800 running Windows Phone 7.8. I have a number of feeds including The Verge, BBC News, 43 Rumors and BBC F1.

Many of the Windows Phone RSS news readers are fast and easy to use. I was using RSS Joy and I found it excellent. However, RSS Joy and many others don't have any photos. They link directly to the mobile web page too. I found that Weave was the best because it shows photos and text. When you press the article, it opens in a mobile viewer (not the mobile web page). It makes it fast and easy to navigate. Of course you can also open in the mobile web page if you want. Sharing with Facebook and other social networking is also very easy.

You can pin individual feeds to the Start screen. For example, if you want to have quick access to the BBC F1 news, pin it! It works well but there is something to be said for going into Weave itself and viewing all the feeds. Weave presents them in a very nice way, horizontally scrolling, Windows Phone style :-)

Click here to learn more about Weave:
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/weave-news-reader/25f7c2fa-ca89-49a7-9937-c7347be73fec


Conclusion
Try Weave, there's a free version so why not? I use it every day. It's easy to use and it is not over complicated. Weave could be better though, when a feed is pinned to the Start screen it would be nice if it were easy to switch to the full app. You have to press the [...] and select it from there - I'd prefer an icon. It's a small point, overall Weave is great!

Recommended: 8/10



PS - If anyone reading this has tried another RSS reader for Windows Phone and prefers it to Weave, please write in the comments!