SBS News 4+

Good app for broad range of news

Major fault when using on my iPhone X. When you open the news item, the return arrow in top left corner of the screen is very hard to activate and if there is a video at the top of the story it usually opens tether returning to the listing of news items. Often need to close the app to go to the next item.

Developer Response ,

Hi John of Rydalmere,

We released an update this morning (4.1.9) to resolve the issue where users were unable to return to the main screen using the back arrow.

You can also contact us via apps@sbs.com.au

Edit: issues with back button fixed! Previously: Back button not working is frustrating

Edit: giving 5 stars now! Good content, minimal ads.
Previous review was:
Happy with the content but I’m having the same trouble, as reported by other users, with the back button on a new iPhone 12 - hence the low rating.
I was finding this frustrating enough to almost delete the app when I accidentally discovered that if I touch the topic (e.g. Australia, North America), the app returns to the topic menu where the main menu can be accessed. It’s not ideal and not an intuitive way to exit a story page but I’ve decided to keep using app for now.

Developer Response ,

Hi caraluka. Thanks for the review and glad to hear you love our content. Select auto update so your're always accessing our latest app version and kept up to date with breaking news and top stories from Australia and around the world. Cheers ^JL. SBS News App

Not a fan 👎

Highly reliant on video content after introductory heading.

Personally, I’d rather read articles at my own pace, which is somewhat faster than waiting for videos to load (which often they don’t), then scrubbing through videos to get to the meat of the story.

This app was quickly relegated to the second group page of news apps, and eventually deleted, after deciding to give it one more chance to impress.
It didn’t.

The only positive?
I don’t have to listen to presenters trying pronounce foreign names or places as though it were their native language.
It’s painfully obvious presenters can’t speak Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, French, ad infinitum, so why pretend you can.
Makes you look the class nurd trying painfully hard to impress others, and failing.

Hearing the US film director Martin Scorsese’s name pronounced in some unfathomable way that I’m sure even Mr Scorsese wouldn’t understand, was when I stopped watching SBS news on TV.

I had hoped this app would be closer to what SBS was some years ago, when Lee Lin Chin didn’t pretend to speak anything other than English.

Browsing the negative reviews, there’s no developer replies. Speaks for itself 💤