Leave a Review The Economist
Excellent journalism but the app is way too slow
These ratings are only for the app. I love the economist news reporting but their app on ios is terribly slow. Its take 2 min just to click the weekly issues tab and scroll to your last article. The article page automatically refreshes if I lose internet for a second and then I need to remember which line I was on. Even switching tabs to check a new email for a second and the whole app refreshes and I need to start again. After I supposedly download the weekly issue, still the data graphs and other images need internet to load offline which makes no sense.
The economist would do well investing in a better engineering team and redesign of the appShow less7Np7
A Source I Can Trust
I’ve been reading the Economist for more than 40 years. I read it when I was conservative republican in my mid-thirties. I read it today in my seventies as a democrat. Despite the fact that my own views have shifted over time, I have always been able to depend on the Economist to give it to me straight—without the hyperbole, bias or the desire to shock, enrage or terrify that so many other news sources use to attract and retain reader/viewers. What a relief. I love being able to read The Economist without the need to activate the filters I use when reading or viewing other news sources.Show lessAwayAtSchool
An American Conservative Review of the Economist
I have only recently subscribed to the Economist and my initial impression is favorable. Your reporting is more balanced than what I am accustomed to from the Financial Times, the other European publication I read on a daily basis. I value the European perspective on "the American Experiment," still evolving after 243 years! There is a sense of desperation on the political Left in America. They want to be well received at Davos and will do and say anything to try to convince the world that we have abandoned the principles of our Revolution in favor of woke globalism. Nothing could further from the truth, most Americans have never heard of Davos and are not interested in the globalist ideas of President Obama, but you won't hear that from American media.Show lessMarine Son of Zeus
Superb
The Economist sets the bar for other paid content apps. It combines daily updates with the weekly magazine in a way that makes it easy to go between the two. It combines audio with yeast seamlessly and tracks everything across all devices. Ads are non intrusive. It is fast and never crashes. We subscribe to several other premium content apps and they could all learn from The Economist user experience.
My one complain is that outside links do not seem to work for non subscribers which should be just good marketing for the magazine.Show lessAndres I Rodriguez
I love the app BUT
I am a great fan of the app, but I personally would like to request two improvements. I mostly use this app for the audio and I’d Economist even more if the two followings were possible.
1. Can we make our own playlist for the audio? For instance I want to skip letter section when I’m listening and it’s frustrating that there’s no way to do so but manually.
2. Can you please introduce sleep timer? Listening to the economist audio and going to bed has been my habit but now I need to turn them off manually and this hasn’t been great.Show less_pker
Great app, few suggestions
Stability has improved over the years but crashes are still frequent, especially when using the audio player.
PLEASE give us the ability to listen faster than 2x - some narrators speak so slowly that we need the ability to go up to 3x speed. A sliding speed selector would be best.
Let us download the text and audio for saved articles - I like to save a bunch of articles and listen to them on my walks but oftentimes don’t have a connection.
I would love some kind of way to organize saved articles. Perhaps a folder system.
When you go through an edition and save the articles you want to read, they are sorted within the “Saved” section with the most recently saved article first. This means the articles are sorted backwards from the order in an edition. Ideally there would be a way to star articles in an edition and when just have the audio player play the starred articles in order
Again, great improvements over the years, hoping to see these features in the future 🙂Show lesszdmsr
A lifetime source of information and thought…
I initiated my love affair with The Economist at age 26, receiving the flimsy-paper airmail edition weekly when the definite article was the capitalized and part of its calling. It followed me in working stints in Chile, Brazil, and El Salvador. For me, the inventor of the “Big Mac Index of Currency Exchange Rates” represented the greatest English language news journal and the best source for world news(given McDonald’s closing its 850 stores in Russia, it leaves the Index in a bit of a bind, or does it switch to the cost of a liter of bottled water with the standard quart augmented by a 1.06 factor?), which kept me well rounded and which I relished. And now, some sixty years later, I feel the same way. Bravo Economist!Show lessGoing...going...
Feedback on v3 update
Great app overall. Putting three stars to elevate some of the issues I encountered in the new version. I’m using the app only in dark mode, if that’s helpful context. 1. Espresso is gone. Someone else mentioned here as well. 2. App state is lost too quickly. My reading style is to jump back and forth between this app and others (e.g. switch to Wikipedia mid-article and come back afterwards to resume the same article). Currently, the app cold starts into the main menu after being the background for about a minute. This is a significant annoyance for me. 3. Read-state check marks were reset locally after the update. These were great to keep track of my backlog in recent few weekly issues. If this is a one time thing, probably I can bear the disturbance however. 4. Read-state check marks are less visible (in dark mode) on the weekly tab compared to v2. This makes it harder to find unread articles in weekly issues. 5. Articles in daily view has advertisement boxes with no advertisements in them. They show empty gray space. While I’m here, I also would like to see the read-state synced to my account server-side. Having them local only is the only reason I read the Economist on just one device, and not iPad and phone together for instance. I hope this is helpful! Thank you for the great app the dev team! iShow lessTugrul Ates
Developer Response
Thanks for the detailed feedback! Espresso should now be reinstated; please make sure you're on the latest version and let us know if you're still not seeing it. Apologies for not keeping your "read" check marks with the update - as you surmise, it's a one-off and they should now work going forward. I'll pass on the rest of your comments and we'll see whether we can make some additional improvements; thanks again for taking the time to provide this valuable information. - LauraThe Economist app improves
At first there was an app for each masthead, then there was a coalescing into a single one. Less to manage, easier to use. My only issue is that when using earbuds that connect directly to my iPhone, the start-stop switch on the earbuds does not stop the audio from playing. That forces me to the use either my Apple watch, or reach into my pocket for my phone (oh the shame of it all). It would also be a very nice feature if the backward and forward on the watch display instead of moving to the previous and next article would instead rewind and fast forward x and y seconds as proscribed by podcast skip button settings. Thanks.Show lesschazubell
Great app but some features needed
I love the Economist and have been a subscriber for over ten years. The app is great for reading, and automatic audio download is awesome.
It would be nice if they could add automatic switching between light and dark mode based on iPhone system settings. Other apps do this, so at sunset my phone switches to dark mode, and at sunrise back to light mode. Currently, in the Economist app you have to change it manually.
Its audio playback & features leave something to be desired. From the Lock Screen, there are no 15-second skip forward & skip back buttons; only next track & previous track. Adding the skip forward buttons would be a great add and align it with other audio and podcast apps. It would be especially useful when I’m out on a walk with a mask on, because I could skip forward & back without unlocking the phone (FaceID doesn’t work with a mask on).
Also, clicking the middle button on Apple’s wired earbuds doesn’t pause the audio...this is annoying because it works for other apps.Show lessSaxab00m
