The Economist Espresso
The Economist Espresso for Android is optimized for smartphones & tablets running Android 4 and above.
ABOUT THE ECONOMIST ESPRESSOThe Economist Espresso is part of The Economist weekly international news and business publication offering independent and clear reporting, commentary and analysis on world current affairs; business, finance, science and technology, culture, society, media and the arts.
IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING PERMISSIONS
Please note that The Economist Espresso app requires access to the following services to operate properly:
Full network access, receive data from Internet, view network connections and view Wi-Fi connections: Required to download the latest issue and to make sure you can read Espresso even when offline.
Control vibration, Send sticky broadcast and Prevent phone from sleeping: Great care has gone into ensuring Espresso is available on your device each morning, even when you access the app when offline. To do so we send a broadcast message to notify the app the latest issue can be automatically downloaded. In addition we wake the device in the morning to retrieve the latest content should the broadcast message not have reached the device.
Google Play Billing Services: The Economist Espresso offers a monthly subscription via Google Play and your Google Play Account.
Read phone status and identity, Approximate location (network-based) and Precise location (GPS and network-based): Required to tailor your reading experience to your current location.
Category : News & Magazines
Reviews (28)
On Samsung tablets, no landscape option. In portrait configuration the text is shifted to the right, which blocks out about 10% of each line. Cell phone text is centered properly. No landscape. The user comments are not presented in chronological order so that five star comments, which describe an old, unavailable app, are seen first. The one or two star comments which are reasonably critical of the app "upgrade" in April, 2022 are scattered further down. No reason for the IT team to be proud.
This review is for the new app... It forgets downloaded content... So if you find yourself underground or beyond phone signal, you get "something went wrong" instead of any content, even if earlier you had starting to read today's content. It seems the "always connected" school of thought developers of the main Economist app have got their claws into this one too. Sad times.
My previous review (2019) was 5 star. They have recently released the "new" version. It is decidedly inelegant and now resembles every other news app available. The writing remains good but the visual clunkiness of the interface and the stunning fact that they chose to remove the daily market data have made it no better than the rest. Heartbreaking.
The Update made the UI horrible, it was supposed to be a short and concise news letter, one tap is all you needed to receive all relevant information, now it's a mess. The fact that it's a subscription service now makes it easier to hate.
The recent update put "the world in brief" behind a paywall. The app lost all value without a subscription. Additionally the new look is less condensed/professional than the original. Overall the update was a significant downgrade in utility.
I've been an Economist subscriber for many years and I'm frustrated that the latest update trashed the app. It no longer auto-rotates and can only be used in portrait mode so I can no longer use it on my Chromebook.
Updated app is much improved. Extras like the cartoon of the week are appreciated. it would be great if the app could incorporate some of the weekly newsletter items like cover story
Great Content and App! Quality curated content, perfect for people struggling to find the time to read everything in the full Economist App. The app itself is very well designed and supports dark theme too.
While the content remains great, the latest update of the app no longer allows landscape mode. This is fine for phones, but makes it very useless for tablets.
Update Apr 2022: would be really great if we could review all the questions for the daily quiz on a Friday, the old version let us review part days' content but I can't see how to do this. Easily digestible summaries of regional events to help you keep up to date.
I'm an Economist subscriber, and found the previous version of this app a very nice way to start my day. However, a new version of the app was pushed out this morning. It includes some (unnecessary in my view) eye candy, but in the process they've taken away one of the most valuable features (again, at least to me). Specifically, as a person living in the U.S., I am apparently no longer able to tell the app to give me the content feed from the U.K., which is available several hours earlier than the U.S. feed. In light of the update, for me personally, the app content now arrives too late in the morning for me to read it (I work odd hours and get a very early start in the morning, and have no time for this app once work starts). If this can't be rectified and I can't set things up to receive the earlier U.K. feed, I won't be able to continue using this. It's a shame that with all of the thinking about updating the app, they didn't recognize that some people might still want to use a U.K./European feed even though they live in the U.S.
After the latest app update, I only get the daily news updates at around noon, which is kind of useless. (I used to read the news at breakfast.) I have contacted The Economist about the issue twice this week, but no solution proposed...
Immediately deleted the app after the new update. It used to free for the 1st article you read on the day, but now you have to pay for anything. I think the content didn't change and their qualities were kept. If you're willing to pay maybe you can give it a try
On a Galaxy s22 Ultra this app is unusable as the text is for some reason shoved to the right side of the screen and part of it is unreadable
I used to be able to read one short article per day (1-3 paragraphs). Now it is a fully paid service. I don't read enough to make it worth a subscription.
Notifications stopped working on the new update but I reinstalled the app and it works. Good source of news every morning.
can't rate it as there is no free options. Why not to say before install: SUBSCRIPTION ONLY or similar. Saves the time and disappointment for its lack of transparency.
the new expresso doesnt have the ability to see back issues ,as far as I can see. the previous version allowed you to select the day of the week. i addition, there is no way to refresh, i must wait until Tuesday to get monday issue in asia, previously i could read it on monday. i am considering cancelling. I hope they will fix this ASAP
I used to be great supporter of app. However it's recent version has profoundly dissapointed me. Additionally, I dare to say that is unacceptable !
Latest app version on my Google Pixel 3 Android 12 device displays article text outside the boundaries of the screen so can't read the articles properly.
sometimes the audio of the daily news does not fit to the written one or is delayed by a day.
Concise, to the point. No spin unless you consider facts spin. Great value.
Echoing new version issues. On modern Android tablet article text is not fully displayed and will not display in landscape as it did before. I currently subscribe, however, taking away the 1 free article does seem counter productive. Finally notifications work still on tablet but not on older android phone. Old version did. Settings the same. An official statement as to whether tablet issue will be resolved or not would be a partial way forward.
Works poorly on Chromebooks. This app has been working great for many years on my Pixelbook. But 2 or 3 years ago, I could only read the first bit of the first article, but could read the others fine (workaround is copy the link and paste in browser). Now, it says I don't have an account and when I try to login, I get a blank screen after putting my email. Unusuable for me.
Super useful and well-written content. Nicely designed. Only complaint is that Google pops up a notice that "this app won't work properly without access...to the telephone." I don't understand the connection. Why does it need to access the phone? Update: I still enjoy the bite-sized updates--but it has not loaded properly for almost a week now. Very buggy version!
This app is a wonderful way to stay current on world events without having to watch the news or filter through unverified articles shared by acquaintances online. The columns are somewhat editorialized (which I find humorous), but it also reveals the underlying biases of the journalists. Despite it carrying a slant (like any news outlet does), I will continue to log in for its quick, easy-to-digest updates on world news.
I have not been able to access this app since the 15th of May, it just gives me an error saying that the editions are unable to download. However, I still get a new notification each morning that I have news that I can read. I have not received any technicsl support to figure out what the situation is and so all of these issues makes paying for a subscription feel super wrong. I just want to read the news!
Latest version is taking this app in the wrong direction. This app used to be a clear and concise way of receiving a great amount of information about the news in a surprisingly short amount of time. Hence the name "Espresso", brilliant! However, this update has brought along faff and bling that has made the experience worse. You have to scroll, swipe, tap, and navigate more pages to actually find the information. Don't follow other news apps, they're bad. Be you, be Espresso again!