The Straits Times App features the Print Edition and latest News, Stocks, Weather and Photos now available in your hands with just a touch of your finger.

The Straits Times App is designed and developed exclusively for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

Subscribers get full access to:

• The Straits Times as published every morning (Singapore Time) via the iPad PDF edition and via the “Full Edition” in the iPhone/iPod Touch
• Updated news throughout the day with the “Breaking News” section
• 7 day archive for both the iPhone and iPad Edition
• Push Notifications for the “Breaking News” on the iPhone based on users keywords
• Subscribers can choose to subscribe for 7 days or for 1 month
• Payment will be charged to iTunes Account at confirmation of purchase
• Subscription automatically renews unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24-hours before the end of the current period
• Account will be charged for renewal within 24-hours prior to the end of the current period, and identify the cost of the renewal
• Subscriptions may be managed by the user and auto-renewal may be turned off by going to the user’s Account Settings after purchase
• No cancellation of the current subscription is allowed during active subscription period
• Any unused portion of a free trial period, if offered, will be forfeited when the user purchases a subscription to that publication.”

*** FREE Access from 1st Aug 2011 to 7th Sep 2011. ***

Pros

1. Download the PDF version & read them offline!
2. All the news are full articles just like you read them from the actual newspaper
3. Breaking News updated often
4. Nice interface with news & videos!

Cons

1. SPH Plans to charge subscriptions for this application for news articles that 85% of it can be found on the Internet and that’s an old media way of saying sorry we cost too much to print those papers hence need your $$$ per issue and if you order it per month we throw in a couple of advertisement too!
2. Some blanks spaces at the breaking news section need to be chopped off 😀
3. There’s no sharing option to twitter, facebook or google+
4. There’s no sending interesting articles to “Readitlater” or “instapaper“
5. Unfortunately, majority of the world news articles can be found from other news sources including sports, lifestyle, technology, world news and many more
6. One advertisement on the iPad keep asking to be rotated vertically to view it
7. After changing the fonts size and scrolling to the last page, sometimes it will stuck at an advertisement or just won’t close unless I go back to home
8. Subscription button not ready, that’s expected but oh well…probably should had grey it out first or an pop up message to say it’s not yet ready for subscription or simply says when it will be expected to be ready.
9. There’s no comment section for each article, maybe joining the forum behind each article can generate some nice comments (of course with moderator approval if possible before appearing).

Overall, it’s not an bad app just not perfect with some bugs here and there and just don’t feel it’s fully completed yet.

Most news reader apps are totally free of charge to use and majority don’t even have advertisements yet, what amused me is how old publication media still hanging on to the cost of “news” these days by saying they need to print xxx number of printed copies of newspapers on paper hence need to collect xxx amount of subscriptions to stay afloat.

I’m glad that they are finding new ways to capture our attention by making this iOS application to get more “readers” to read the local news…I say local news because that’s the only original news they probably can write where the rest can be easily found elsewhere in the world of Internet.

The problems are easy to identify, information are dirt cheap on the Internet and anyone with a social network will know…all you need to do is ask what’s happening and some form of a URL link will magically appear from your network telling what’s going on in the world.

I believe that only the older generation with no knowledge of the search engine call “google” will subscribe as they don’t bother to search for news and gladly pay for a weekly or monthly subscription for ONE newspaper.

The only way this application can be successful is to make more features available to make it worth the price of subscription like integrate ST701 classified section or forum per each article (Only registered user can comment).

Overall, I’m excited about the future possibilities of this application but currently a little disappointed but optimistic that it will be better or remain free 😀