NERD OFF!! Pulse News Reader vs Flud News Reader
vs. 
Now, for a long time, I have
used Pulse News as this is without a question one of the best readers out there
as it is simple to use and yet has its own beautiful features too. I’ve been
using Flud for about a week now and decided that I wanted to do a comparison
between to two by separating the comparison into different categories and then
grading both apps at the end of each round. The four categories I have chosen
to compare these two applications in are: Ease of Use, Presentation,
Reliability, Speed and Features.
I’ll do the obvious thing and
talk about each of the categories for both applications and then as
aforementioned, I’ll grade each application on how it performs in the certain
category. All right, let’s begin.
Ease of Use
Pulse
One of the things I highlighted
about as to why Pulse was so popular was the fact that it is just simply so
easy to use and allows you to simply open the app, tap on a story and you’re
off. However, when it comes to other sections such as adding in stories, I
began to get a tad confused. There isn’t simply an “Add Source” button or
something on this application which means you have to find the correct button.
In addition to this, there are two settings buttons, one is a cog that acts as
your Source feed manager and the other opens up actual settings. Now I know
this is trivial, but compared to Flud’s way of adding a source, it’s slightly
misleading. Apart from that though, the application is easy to use when reading
articles and sharing articles etc.
Rating:
8.9
Flud
With Flud, you have a
completely different way of doing this; there is a settings button up in the
top right-hand corner (signified by the ICS three dots) which you tap and then
it gives you the option to “Add News” which for me, was a FAR simpler way of
adding news. However, viewing isn’t as simple because with Pulse, you scroll
down and each feed has it’s own row, yet it all appears on one panel. However,
with Flud, you have multiple panes to slide through and slide down each Feed;
so it would be tricky to find a certain Feed if you didn’t have them organised
and had quite a few.
Rating:
8.3
Presentation
Pulse
Pulse is a beautiful little
application that really shines when using it on a tablet device, however, we’re
talking about the Android mobile version here and it just feels a little
simple. There are some nice animations thrown in when navigating the
application, but visually when you’re not using the app, it’s not a very
appealing application. In addition, the fact Pulse has two settings buttons
really does not make sense to me, but there may be some reason for that.
Rating:
8.4
Flud
Earlier I talked about how I
found Flud because I’d watched a video in which they’d said Flud made reading
news pretty and they weren’t far wrong! I think whoever designed this
application’s interface really knew what made an application sexy. It uses
large photos for each news story and the icons along the top are large but not
too large. The scrolling between different panels is really nice and works
well. I would like if they’d added in some animations, but the app is still
young and so has a big future ahead of it.
Rating:
9.1
Reliability
Pulse
Another reason that Pulse is so
popular is down to its reliability. With it’s built in push notifications, the
fact it always works so well and the way that everything just seems to gel
together. With some applications you seem to get the problem that they don’t
respond when outside of Wi-Fi (for me anyway) however with Pulse, you can count
on it wherever you go and it will always bring you your News and fast!
Rating:
8.9
Flud
Flud is fairly new to the
market and so has had little time to get rid of bugs and such, however I pleasantly
surprised with how reliable this application is. At the start I did experience
a problem here I had to log in to my account every time I opened it, but that
problem seems to have gone away and will certainly be fixed in a future update.
Apart from this, news stories always seem to be up to date when I get into the
application along with the fact I’ve had no crashes with the application.
Rating:
8.7
Speed
Pulse
As I mentioned before, Pulse
will bring you your news very fast. However, seeing as this is a comparison
between the two, I felt that Flud always seemed to be up to date and I never
found myself having to refresh the news feed. However with Pulse, I did feel
the need to refresh the news feeds. Apart from this, the application zooms
around and news stories open up nice and fast and once again, updates to the
application can only make this action faster.
Rating:
8.5
Flud
As I mentioned in the Pulse
part of this round, Flud appears to have the news feed refreshed and updated
before you even access the application. This may be a brilliant push function,
or it may just be the fact that I see the notification from Pulse and open the
same news feed in Flud and they’ve already been refreshed or something, I don’t
know. As for the speed of the application, it is a very nippy app, however I do
feel it could be updated with a slight speed improvement when opening stories
or maybe animations to make it seem like they’ve opened quicker.
Rating:
8.5
Features
Pulse
Pulse is a very simple News
Reader application in terms of features. You can share stories over your social
networks and can save them to your pulse.me account. The Pulse.me is a nice
feature as it enables to be able to save your News Feeds for when you open up
Pulse online or on another device. However, apart from that, there’s a not you
can really do with Pulse except add/remove news feeds, set categories and
reaarange the positions of your feeds.
Rating:
8.1
Now this is where I think Flud
could really become the top News Reading application! Not only does Flud have
ALL the options that Pulse features, but it also has it’s very own personal
social side. When you first open the application, you are asked to create a
Flud account which intrigued me. Now what this means is that you can “Flud”
things which is basically “Favouriting” or “Liking” them which then people who
follow you can see. You can also view what others have “Fluded” and their Top
Sources, where they live, how many articles they’ve read. IN ADDITION, you have
an activity button at the top of the homescreen that lets you view a timeline
of what your friends have Fluded. I personally think this could be a MASSIVE
boost for social news reading and could in fact bring the younger generation
into reading more news as they can then share and talk about it with their
friends. Brilliant idea Flud team and I hope you really build on this and take
advantage of this!
Rating:
9.5
Pulse:
42.8
Flud:
44.1
As you can see, Flud has edged
in front os Pulse which is a VERY impressive feat for an application that isn’t
half as well known as the Pulse application. Now I believe that Flud could
really explode within the mobile app market if it gains some publicity. With a little
speed improvement and some more stable features here and there, this
application has the potential to be the best news application in the market. The
social features really make this application stand out and really make it
something very different. Not to mention how beautiful the application looks
and feels!
|
| Download Pulse |
|
| Download Flud |
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