Watchup is a free video news app for Android to watch news videos. This app lets you select your favorite News Channels from across the globe, and then it will show you personalized Video News from those channels. Not only that, you can also choose specific interests or topics depending on which you will be shown News videos (Politics, Business, World, etc.).
There is a huge listing of News Channels in the app, arranged by countries, and you can choose the ones that you like. The app supports most of the popular local and global News channels, like ABC News, CNN, Fox News, BBC, Al Jazeera, Reuters, AP, NDTV, and much more.
Once you have chosen the News channels and your interests, just sit back and relax. The app will pull News videos from all those sources and will start playing them for you. The videos will be played continuously one after the other, so you can just watch all the News videos from your favorite sources.
Not content with just videos? You can also read related news for a particular video. If you barely get time to sit in front of your TV and want an app to watch News on the go, you should read on.
Watch and Subscribe to News Channels from Around the Globe:
Yep, you can edit the subscribed News channels and hence your Newscast too. Just open the sidebar drawer, and you will see the name for some channels. To add or edit the subscribed channels, just open the “More Channels” option below the listed channels. You can then select or deselect whichever news sources you like.
One thing to note here is that even though channels from all over the world are present and can be set as sources, the news seems heavily aimed towards the residents of the USA.
Watch Local, National and International News Videos and Schedule Personalized Newscast:
Watchup has unique and simplistic design aimed just at one thing – to provide you all the News that you crave for. The moment that you launch the app for the first time, it will ask for your favorite News topics. Following are some of the topics available in the app:
- Politics
- World
- Business
- Tech
Select your favorites and after that, the app will ask you to schedule your daily NewsCast. This is the time when the app will download all the data from the sources that you selected (Do keep in mind that this DOES NOT mean that the app will preload the videos for you — it will only refresh the video list). Yep, you will be asked to sign-up too, but that’s only so that your favorite channels are stored with Watchup.
Watch Video News from a Continuous Playlist:
Once the initial hurdles are dealt with, the app’s main screen is shown — complete with a video list and a video which will be played currently. The next videos from your Newscast will be played automatically unless you manually choose to play a video or rearrange a video’s position in the list. When you tap on a video in the list, the thumbnail icon of the video will show two icons – one upward arrow and a play button. Tapping the upward arrow will move the video to the top of the queue (that is, put it on NEXT), while the PLAY button will, obviously, start playing the video.
Read Related News in Watchup for Android:
Tap on the stacked newspaper icon on the top right, and you will be shown all related news for the currently played video in textual form. This section basically provides you the text description of the video and a peek at what other news channels or sources are reporting about the topic in the video. This page can also be used to browse to a webpage, but I didn’t find the browser part of much use. This section is only meant for people who want to READ News. Other users can stick only to the video part if they are content.
Other Features:
Coming back to the main screen again, the UI layout will seem familiar since it is somewhat similar to YouTube. The video is at the top with PREVIOUS, PLAY, and NEXT button as an overlay on the video itself, while the list is just below it. The list is a bit fiddly on phones as I couldn’t find a way to enlarge the list to take the whole screen. And, just above the list, you will see a status bar like pull-down menu. Slide it down and it will show you details about the video and name of the source channel (the screenshots below show that).
Conclusion:
Watchup is not meant to be your primary news provider since it isn’t aimed towards users who like to read their News. Watchup is there only if you want to see videos from News Channels all around the World. The interface is similar to that of a video player app (e.g. YouTube), and that’s exactly what Watchup for Android is. And even though there are some connectivity issues that I noticed, the idea and execution are impressive. The fact that you can watch all the aggregated news that you are interested in just by opening the app, is fantastic. It requires no user interaction and hence can be of great help if you are busy with some work at home or just rushing to your office and grabbing a bite. And yes, you can get this video news app for free from the Google Play Store.
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