The Financial Times has a new Mobile News Reader application. I seem to remember they had a previous version a few years ago but I no longer have it on my phone. (Or it was on my previous phone?)

The application is built by a company called Leiki and provisioned by Bango. After registering on the website I was sent both a WAP Push and a backup SMS, I think this is a definitely a provisioning best practice. I tested the WAP provisioning process in Firefox (using UA spoofing) and couldn't see any clever device profiling happening, looks like they have gone down the single JAR route for all devices.

The interface isn't too bad but there are some usability issues I find frustrating. The two main problems are the lack of an obvious exit route (they mention this in the help text) and the fact that there are no soft keys on display.

The top tab navigation looks good and works really well by simply using the left and right keys. Instead of using soft keys for navigation the top tab area changes depending on the context (bottom left image) but this navigation isn't consistently implemented through-out the application.

The product is definitely going to be monetized through subscription (bottom right image) and top white space seems intended for advertising (as with their WAP site) but nothing has ever loaded in that space leaving a pointless white gap in the interface.

If you click either of the soft key buttons a native menu screen pops up which is inconsistent with the rest of the application interface. I really would have expected to have found an exit button here.

I give this application 6/10.



Download it here.

[Via MocoNews.]