Want to make better use of your phone? Get news aggregator apps

Decent smartphones can be expensive, owing to the fact that a lot of capital goes into research, material acquisition, manufacturing, marketing and distribution of the hardware of these devices.

And with the pressure on for us to get with the times and acquire a smartphone at what can be an outrageous price, many of us struggle to justify the cost. Even when we fork out the cash, it can seem like the experience of the phone is not worth its price tag.

But is it the device’s fault or are we underusing these modern-day marvels of technology?

Smart features

Smartphones rely on software or apps to give them their so-called smart features, and hence added functionality.

Newly acquired smartphones are a sort of blank slate — they are bland and devoid of functionality since they come with very basic software installed.

It is up to the buyer to instal the necessary software, which include games, social media apps and utilities. This is what makes smartphones useful.

This software is available through the various app stores that come bundled with the phones — the likes of Google’s Play Store, Apple’s App Store and Microsoft’s Windows Phone Store.

In essence, app stores are repositories or catalogues of apps available for installation on phones.

Given the popularity of smartphones across the world, the offerings in these app stores are dizzying. For instance, the Play Store had about 1.4 million apps as at February this year.

To help customers navigate this maze, the stores categorise apps for ease of navigation. This column will try to work out what the most useful apps are in each category, starting with news aggregators this week.

News aggregators are basically apps that compile news from various sources. They tend do this in a pre-defined manner selected by a user. This could either be through the manual selection of topics of interest or the app automatically generating links to stories related to what a user has read.

We have various personal interests and often find ourselves reading news that touches on these interests. And as news agencies scramble to reach an increasingly digital audience, the number of individual news apps is staggering.

This is where aggregators come in handy. They basically sift through all news items — including local reports — and pass on only what you find interesting.

Best options

Flipboard is one such aggregator. It is available in both the App and Play stores. Its most compelling feature is its design. As the name suggests, you flip through collated articles just as you would the pages of a magazine or newspaper.

Zite is also available in the App and Play stores. It presents articles as a list based on your geographical location and interests you choose. It then slowly learns your preferences in the background as you read and builds on the list.

Feedly is another good option. It has been ported from its computer version, and presents stories based on pre-selected categories.

The main trouble with these apps is that they create a filter bubble — you learn everything there is to know about your fields of interest, but can end up being separated from information on other key events. But perhaps that’s where social media apps come in.