Hands on with the new Yahoo app for iPhone
Yahoo on Monday released a new version of its Yahoo app for iPhone. I’m not sure what I expected from an app called Yahoo, but I will admit that the fact that it’s a news app left me feeling surprised. The updated app now integrates Summly, a technology Yahoo acquired just last month, which aims to algorithmically create summaries from lengthier text.
Yahoo's default look is just a list of headlines.
At first, though, I couldn’t find any summaries anywhere. All you see when you first launch the app is a list of headlines. They’re pleasant looking enough (even if the news itself isn’t), and when you tap on stories, you usually see the full article. It scrolls smoothly and is easy to read, though there are no options for adjusting the font size.
In those situations where you can’t see the full article, though, you don’t see an algorithmically-generated summary. Instead, you see the first paragraph or two of the story, along with a link to read the rest of the article. Ironically, annoyingly, and obnoxiously, these seems to happen most often in my early testing with articles published by Yahoo on some of its less well known properties, like Shine. You’re forced to make an extra tap and wait for a mobile-optimized version of the story to load in an in-app Web browser.
Yahoo spent a lot of money to generate that summary. So I hope you really enjoy it.
So where are those summaries, then? Turns out you need to tap on the hamburger button at the upper left of the app to expose its left-side drawer. There, you’ll find a slider labeled Visual; turn it on, and the app’s look transforms.
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