Coffee Dharma

Feeding The BlackBerry

Posted on 23. Oct, 2008 by Rob in All, Older, Review

BlackBerry devices do a lot of things very well, RSS included.  There are quite a few different RSS readers available for BBs and I decided to test out a few current ones to see which was the best for me.

The contenders for this matchup were Viigo (beta), NewsGator Go and FreeRange.  I didn’t include a couple others because they hadn’t been updated in a while.  Google Reader is great as well but I prefer a “desktop” app over web based ones.  FreeRange actually makes the NewsGator Go app as well but has some minor differences.

Viigo (beta)

Viigo was hands down the best designed UI of any of the three readers.  They have paid special attention to making their product looked polished and recent.  Viigo goes well beyond just RSS as it also has the ability to tap into quite a few other services travel info, market news, local classifieds and much more.  I found these extras simply slowed down the experience for me as I was looking for a simple RSS reader and not all the extras.  I was also disappointed to find that the market services were geared towards market news and not direct stock quotes.  I couldn’t get Viigo to recognize FeedBurner feeds which was a major problem for me. If your looking for a smooth UI and a lot of extras, Viigo is likely where you want to go as they have done a great job making their app all-inclusive.

NewsGator Go

I use FeedDemon on my Vista machine on a daily basis.  It is the best reader I have ever used and I think it will always be one of my top choices in applications.  I had high hopes for NewsGator Go right away since I was so used to their other apps.  Sadly I had multiple problems with the app right out of the gate.  I found articles would download multiple times and when clicked I could only see a blank page.  A reader that doesn’t let you read the article is pointless.  I couldn’t find much help on the matter in their support forums either and quickly left it behind.  This could very likely be a problem with my device setup (8130 4.5.0.89 OS) and I recommend trying it on yours before passing them by.

FreeRange

FreeRange makes the NewsGator Go app so I had some reservations at first.  I was surprised to find out that it was very similar in look and function but worked perfectly on my device.  It is simple in UI and design but does quite a bit.  It has support for most feed types (including FeedBurner) and also supports some of the extras you find in Viigo (weather, market updates, news).  One edge FreeRange had over Viigo was speed.  I was happy to find I could search for feeds right from the app and it did so very quickly.  It updated my feeds correctly and loaded them even faster.  A great surprise was finding that you can specify stocks and have it give an updated quote feed.  While it doesn’t have all the options of Viigo, it does the basics quickly and with stability.

Conclusion:

Each reader can offer something slightly different to the user (well, if NewsGator Go works that is).  I personally wanted a simple reader without all the bells and whistles.  I found FreeRange to be the best choice for me as it was the fastest by far and supported a wide variety of feed types.  The UI is simplified and makes reading easy and fast.  I recommend trying each one out and seeing which is the best fit for you.  I’m sure there will be bigger and better things on the horizon (especially now that RIM has introduced push API).

Tags: Blackberry, News, Review, RSS