New version horrendous. Basically unusable. DO NOT UPGRADE! – POLITICO Review

Major problem with latest update of the new version. Offline mode does NOT work on the iPhone! Even with Cache ON, nothing is downloaded and the headlines are all grayed out! In addition, articles are littered with ads, many of which are offensive. Readers hardly want to see the thighs of someone who is sitting on a toilet! What's wrong with you, Politico?! —————— The new version fails in key areas. 1. It deletes ALL of your saved stories. No app should ever do that. 2. The headline-story list is now one long vertical scrolling list, all the exact same size. It's ridiculous looking, 3. The headlines and images are small. 4. There are embedded ads every fifth headline — and their bars are larger than the news headlines. 5. The new layout makes it impossible to locate stories easily. 6. There are no sections. 7. Worst of all, there is no way of adjusting the font size of stories and the default is way too small. 8. The app promotes signing up for an account — even warning that you cannot save stories unless you do so. Yet, if you reject signing up, it will save the story anyway. BUT WHAT DOES THAT DO TO RECOVER THE SCORES OF SAVED STORIES THAT THE APP DELETED? The first rule of app development should be the Hippocratic Oath: “First, do no harm!” 9. The app claims there is an offline mode, but when offline, all the headlines are “greyed” out and there is NO offline reading! And, that’s with auto cache set to ON. 10. The app now takes forever to launch and load the headlines! It used to be virtually instantaneous. What a disaster! 11. Finally, they've also broken the old app! I reinstalled it and it crashes every time you click on a new news story. That's really not cricket. If a user wants to continue using an app they have already downloaded (and, in many cases, paid for), they should be free to do so! Note: At least reinstalling the old version will give you access to your previously saved stories. Down to 1 star. Given its dysfunction, poor interface, weak design, and tiny text, I'll no longer be using the Politico app. It's truly that bad! Here's the previous review for when it was working! —————— Weak design--no font size control, settings buried, interface needs improving. Politico itself is pretty good at covering the "inside baseball" of politics, albeit usually from a markedly conservative slant. The app, though, needs improvement, especially in readability. The default font size is too small and it lacks a built-in way of changing the font size! It relies on the General Settings for iOS, but that then makes everything else too big! Just try finding the Settings inside the app... They are buried 4 layers deep under Other! The navigation is convoluted. A scrolling tab bar across the top would work much better than the expand-o, hide-o left-hand design. ------ AN EARLIER REVIEW The adverts are intrusive; taking up valuable screen space and appearing at random, full screen! if you're going to have ads, put out an ad-free version for some $, too! The app needs font size controls. Right now, the app used iOS's Accessibility, Dynamic Type setting, but very poorly. The result is that sub-headlines are HUGE, but article text is smaller than it should be. There needs to be a way of setting font size within the app itself! All other major news apps give users a way to change it! Give us font size controls or double-tap zooming with text reflow. All this is really too bad as Politico is an excellent source of well-written, well investigated stories (though from a markedly conservative perspective). But if the articles are too small to read comfortably, what's the point of the app? As several folks have pointed out, the mobile web site works much better than the app!
Review by AstroPaul on POLITICO.