War on the Rocks for Android

War on the Rocks continues to provide excellent coverage and analysis of global affairs. However, this app is a miserable experience. As others have noted, the app is really just a portal to hyper-linked articles. Articles don’t stay open when you switch apps or temporarily put down your phone. It’s impossible to start an article, turn to another task, and return to where you were reading. Until this app is re-engineered to function like an actual news app (of which there are many great examples) I’d forgo downloading it and stick to the website.

I thought this app would give me the best WOTR experience. Once I log into it, all I can do is change my profile. There’s no way to get to content or anything in there. I have just spent 30 minutes ding around with it and I can’t make it work, I’ll go back to trying to access stuff from the website. For $150 a year I guess my expectations were somewhat higher. Content is still first rate, presentation poor.

War On The Rocks is an great, their app is not. The app requires you to sign into your subscriber account every time you open the app. It is not a stand alone app, but rather it simply routes to the website. Excellent content, but tedious app to view it in.

This App displays SIDEWAYS on my Mobile. It’s a shame because the content is worth reading. Fix it if you expect Mobile readers to use it.

This app is just a web client with a subscribed user login, produced by a company that is seeking to monetize as much content as they can create. There is an embedded audio player with a single control, play/stop. There is no ‘forward to the end’ or ‘reverse to the end’, there is no ‘reverse by :05/:15/:30 seconds’ and no ‘forward by :05/:15/:30 seconds’. The audio player does not have a list to display what has been played and what has not been played. There is a way to separate the audio player from the web client and from the interactive forum client. There are no other controls for either the web client or the audio player. There is a control gear widget, but all it provides is one control to toggle for Push Notifications, and the rest is information about the company e.g. ToS, Privacy Policy, FAQ, inquiries and tech support, and ‘invite your friends!’. There is no CarPlay compatibility, and no Dark Mode. So if you want to play podcasts in the car or read at night forget about it. It does not differentiate the separate content subjects. The web client does not remember state, so if you scrolled down a ways and then go to a different app on your device and then come back to the WOTR app it places you at the top again. It is missing many major European languages (French) and has no Scandinavian languages; it has German and Russian but no Ukrainian; it has a few minor languages (Polish, Romanian). This app is all about monetizing content for the creator with a myriad of subject streams, but with little attention to UX/UI detail for the user/customer. The app is (currently) listed as version 1.2.0, but it really should be at v0.5.0. Have to assume they did no user testing (UX/UI) whatsoever aside from the principals.