Shows headlines from the currently selected feed. The maximum number of headlines shown can be configured in the preferences.
Click on a headline to read the article. Articles you have already read are marked in grey.
In the headline view, long click to create a link to that article using 3banana Notes.
In the article view, select Menu and Save to My Notebook.
Press Menu and select View Notes to view all BBC News notes.
Shows a list of available feeds. Select a feed name to view that feed.
Note the feed list is different depending if UK or international feeds are selected in the Preferences.
Add a widget by long clicking the phone Home screen and selecting Add Widget. Then select BBC News from the list.
The widget update rate can be configured by the preferences. There are two frequencies to configure; the update frequency when the phone is in use, and the update frequency when the phone is in standby.
If BBC News was launched by pressing a widget, selecting preferences and then 'Change widget feed' and then clicking on a feed will change the feed that that particular widget uses.
If it was launched from the application menu, the button can be used to change the default feed.
When an internet connection is available, the application will pre-download headlines, thumbnail pictures and articles for the default feed and for feeds being used by widgets.
This allows the application to be used later when there is no internet available. If the feature is not desired it can be disabled in the Preferences, provided breaking news notifications are also disabled.
The BBC contacted me and asked me to stop referring users to the "low graphics" version of articles because they intend to discontinue these versions very shortly. Instead I am using the "mobile" versions. I have restyled the page slightly to make it appear closer to the "low graphics" versions, but cannot do anything about the small size of the pictures in these articles.
There is a 4MB internal database for headlines and read records, and a 2MB database for article contents. When the database is full, older articles are deleted to make way for new ones. There is no specific time that articles are retained for. However the number of articles shown in the headlines view is capped at a specific value set in the preferences.
When the app downloads headlines for widget updates or default feed updates if they are flagged as 'breaking news' by the BBC editorial team they will be alerted. This does not happen if you are inside the app at the time.
This is not a simple bug but is concerned with the way Android limits the number of sessions that can be open on a particular app.
I try each release with a number of handsets including all the popular ones. However given 200,000 users of this application some users will experience problems never seen in development or testing. If you have any more information on these problems please get in touch at jimblackler@gmail.com . Please let me know the version of the application you are using, and the model of phone you have.
I have a report of widgets not updating after several days. It may help to go into the main application if you experience this problem.
One user reports the same articles appearing constantly in the headline list.