The official Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com) app for Windows Phone 8 brings all your favourite articles, photos, videos and blogs from the popular resource and displays everything in a simple, intuitive user interface.
From politics to fashion, business and technology to entertainment, there's content covering the stories you wish to learn more about. Though this is the initial release of the app, The Huffington Post falls short on functionality and basic features we'd expect to see (and is highlighted on the store listing).
It's a strange app since the app listing itself boasts numerous features that just don't appear to be available in the initial release. Real-time updates are promised from HuffPost's newsroom, as well as the ability to share your favourite stories with friends through social media. Neither these features aren't present or we couldn't locate them. In fact, the app is rather bare when you've browsed through all the sections available (does the design remind you of anything? Bing News perhaps?).
We've not even begun to touch on the lack of comments in loaded articles -- both viewing threads and adding your own opinion. It's great to see The Huffington Post on Windows Phone, but we would have expected more from such a highly reputable news aggregator and blog.
Problems with optimisation, loading times and lack of functionality aside, it's a decent application and news resource. Articles are displayed neatly with the option to both increase or decrease font size. While formatting could be improved, it's a start and we're pleased that photos load successfully and it's not white text on dark backgrounds. You can pin the app to the Start screen, but don't count on there being options to customise exactly what's sent to the tile. Also, there's no lock screen support, which sucks.
Unfortunately, while it's superb to see the brand listed on the Windows Phone Store, we'd wholeheartedly recommend the mobile version of The Huffington Post website for the time being. Once more features have been added, including sharing, comments, account management, customisations and further Live Tile (and lockscreen) support, we'll take a second look at the app and see if it's worthy of the download.
You can download The Huffington Post from the Windows Phone Store for free and remember, it is only available for Windows Phone 8 devices. What are your thoughts on the Huffington Post Windows Phone app?
