The Independent 4+

Nearly there!

I’ve been reading the Indy since it first appeared and was an early adopter of digital. Having also used other news apps I can say this combines live news with a digital paper (if you want that option) well.
The content continues to be excellent, avoiding click bait headlines and providing a balanced view of the world compared to others.
The one and only frustration is the inability to comment on articles from within the app. Having to go the the website to do this is a drawback. Otherwise, excellent.

I’m trying to tolerate the user experience but failing

I signed up to a a three month trial early winter and didn’t renew as the user experience such as app layout, caching and refresh is terrible. I had an offer to renew for another three months and I’m still in that three months. During that time the user experience has declined further. The layout in the app is just dreadful. If I view from my laptop browser I can select sub-headings and view articles. It seems as though the app is the lite version with minimal content. The biggest issue is refreshing of content. My mobile is stuck on articles from five days ago and will not refresh. iPad simply won’t load anything, just blank. The standard of journalism is excellent hence 3 stars but the app is awful. In a time when survival of a news outlet depends on digital perhaps the best newspaper in the UK is heading in the wrong direction. Either there is not sufficient investment or the wrong team are running the show. I subscribe to the Guardian too and though I’ve tired of their click bait reporting the digital experience is amazing. Please sort it out. The UK without a decent readership of The Independent will be a poorer place.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for your feedback! We deeply respect your advice, and we will try to combine your feedback with our app development, in order to provide better user experience. The Independent team

Doesn’t open newspaper

For an online newspaper you’d expect the app to be brilliant and, at least, to open the daily newspaper. But no! Every day I try to open it and every day it gives the error: “Fail to load timeline. The operation couldn’t be completed. (NSURLErrorDomain error -999.)”. I hit Retry and get another error, and so on. The only way to actually read the paper is to download it, open it, it will give another error, and only then it loads. But then, if you swap to another app, and go back, the entire app will reset and restart on the main menu, having to again go to the newspaper icon, get the error and hit Retry to read it again. Seriously?? You are an online newspaper! Please sort this out asap. And before you question it: yes, I’ve deleted the app and reinstalled it multiple times; yes, I am logged in; yes, my Wi-Fi is on and internet is working; yes, my storage is not full; and yes, I have paid and my subscription is active. It is an issue with the app, and apparently a lot of other people are experiencing the same problems. Please, please, fix the app. Thanks

Developer Response ,

Hi, Could you please contact us via customerservices@independent.co.uk? We'd love to hear more about this issue in order to assist you.