The HTC Sense Home app received an update earlier this week and usually that’s a good thing, but that’s no so much the case as far as BlinkFeed users are concerned. HTC was on a good path when BlinkFeed was born. It has been a popular source for broadcasting news to us that we might not get in our traditional social feeds. In fact, it even gained enough attention that I believe I noticed a similar service baked into TouchWiz when I tested a Galaxy S6 earlier this year.
So what’s the big fuss over BlinkFeed and the latest update?
After you update to the version of HTC Sense Home released on 11-11-15, BlinkFeed will give a notice to transfer your subscription to News Republic within the next 30 days.
Does this mean BlinkFeed is going away? Not necessarily. HTC is changing the way it delivers news through BlinkFeed. First, by getting rid of its own service that I’m sure they were paying the media outlets to include in the feed. Second, by partnering with news aggregates like News Republic and possibly more partners to come. And you can still receive highlights from your most used social networks like Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
The downside for BlinkFeed users is that we now have to install a third party app called News Republic, set up a new account with their site, and when we expand articles from BlinkFeed they will take longer to open while the info is handed off to News Republic to render the rest of the content. Saving articles to “Read Later” using Pocket is no longer available either. Users will have to go through a few more taps before saving items to an optimized bookmarking tool like Pocket. It will take some getting used to and I look forward to other partners in the future.
On the plus side, News Republic provides more media outlets to get news from and offers a new way to organize what we see on the screen. You can see news that is relevant to your interests, view top or trending topics, or just the most important from your selected topics.
By now, I’m sure some users are disappointed at how BlinkFeed has changed direction, but we need to understand that HTC is RE-honing the focus on what HTC does best; making hardware. When the HTC One A9 was announced, HTC USA President Jason Mackenzie said HTC isn’t wasting time creating software that Google or other developers already make. Think about it, HTC has had to make some big financial cuts this year and those cuts have to show some scars. Decommissioning services like HTC Sense TV and news aggregation from BlinkFeed is part of the blood lost from those wounds.
Get the News Republic app here.
Source: Google Play
Actually, you don’t have to make an account for news republic, it’s completely optional, and works just fine without registering. Only downside to this is that now when you view news in blinkfeed they show up with ads.
And it’s slower and laggy compared to Blinkfeed because of the News Republic hand off every time you open an article. And it’s worse on battery life. It’s a turd.
that’s true 🙂 Oh well..
Which… is dumb.
The whole point of aggregrating news is so that users can take a glance or take a quick 5 minute read through. Having silly ads, a longer load time and not to mention, poorer performance makes zero sense.
HTC has done everything wrong in the year of 2015 and it looks like they’re just going to keep digging.
Sad because I really do still like my M8.
Time to look for a new phone.
I hate News Republic!
I just got an inquiry form HTC asking how I felt about News Republic.
It is terrible for a lot of reasons, and here are a few.
First, you can;t choose who you get your news from. I hate the biased reporting of Huffington Post but you can;t delete news feeds form them.
I live in Washington State, but when you choose news about Washington State most of the news you get is about Washington DC.
I singed up for College Basketball news feeds, but ost of the articles are about other sports.
New Republic is terrible.
I really liked Blink feed and unless that comes back I will switch from an HTC phone to soem other that provides news feeds that give me a choice.
I agree with John, I hate the stuff news republic is showing, and I want to get rid of it. I have not signed up, but the article pics still show up.
I also got my M8 and 9 because I really like blink feed. Now, I can’t see the point and likely will look at Samsung next, or Sony.
am fine with your news republic i know how to use all its features and i don’t feel any trouble in it.
But where am feeling trouble is once i set my news republic topics why my blink feed not auto referencing it stays in same topic for more the three days but i can see many new feeds once i open news republic directly.
I hate its not auto updating and even i pull down my blink feed it wont refresh. please make a solution.
I started getting notifications from News Republic a few days ago and they’re driving me insane. I’d never used it or even heard of it before. I can’t stand the notifications of supposed “news” and can’t stop them. I have gone to settings and turned off notifications and 5 minutes later I get another one. When I go to settings again they have been turned back on. I have unchecked all 53 trillion topics that somehow had all been selected for me and turned off notifications in settings…and I’m still getting them. I have been buying HTC products for a long time but I will not continue putting up with this.