Microsoft's latest news app to compete with Google and Apple

In its effort to compete directly with Google News and Apple News, Microsoft has launched a new app that features stories from MSN.com. The new app comes with a modern upgraded user interface.

The app, available for Android and iOS users, will sync your news preferences with all the other devices you are logged into. According to Microsoft, the new app “powers news on Microsoft Edge, the News app in Windows 10, Skype, Xbox and Outlook.com,” meaning these accounts will also get synced with your news preferences letting you enjoy the more refined news. 

Talking about the news content, Microsoft says it has partnered with over 1,000 publishers and 3,000 different brands. The content from these sources is scanned and analysed by Microsoft's efficient AI. More than 100,000 pieces of articles are scanned by the AI and it also goes through the more than 800 human editors spread all across the world for better results. 

The app offers you to choose from light and dark themes. After selecting your preferred categories initially, the app is very easy to navigate, and you get to browse through the stories as per your selected categories. Moreover, you can also select the option of local news, where you will be able to see stories sorted according to your location.

However, one drawback is that the app shows this news in an in-app browser instead of the native browsers. Another major drawback is the lack of 'Full Coverage' option that is offered by Google to get in detailed content about the specific news from different sources.