Nov 9th2009

Metro- The Fastest Way to Get News on 5800, not really!

Nothing beats having a copy of the latest newspaper in your hands as you sip on to your morning coffee but looks like the days of paper based news services are numbered, especially considering the pace at which the web and handheld technologies are evolving these days. It’s time we found an alternative to our early morning ritual and thats when we landed on Metro, the latest app in Ovi store.

There are a number of news based widgets in the ovi store, which are mostly rss readers pulling the latest rss feeds from the respective websites. What sets Metro apart from the rest is its synchronisation with networking services like facebook and twitter along with hourly updates from leading newspapers.

Screenshots-

Going by the item description in the ovi store, we kinda had high expectations from this widget but unfortunately the widget didn’t measure up to our expectations. The very first feature that’s gonna put off a number of our readers is the fact that the widget can pull of latest news from dailies of only 8 countries (France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Mexico and US) and unfortunately we don’t happen to be residing in one.

Another major concern we had with the widget was the speed of browsing which was rather disappointing making us wonder if we were better off checking the mobile version of the leading dailies on the symbian browser.

What we like?

Touch optimized interface
Facebook and Twitter integration is cool

What we don’t like?

Limited number of countries supported
Unsatisfactory browsing speed

Verdict

Though the Metro is based on an interesting concept, the implementation has been rather poorly done. Our review might have been a little biased considering the fact that we are not based in one of the supported countries which may have also effected the browsing speed of the widget, two of our major complaints.

However, Facebook and twitter integration makes this widget an indispensable tool to share news among these popular networking sites. While we would not recommend this app, our readers based in the supported countries can give it a try just for the Facebook and twitter integration if not for anything else.

Free download link for Metro