App of the Week: Wildcard – Better news discovery, quicker

If you’re one of the many Android users left feeling distraught when Circa announced it was shutting down, there’s some good news. One of the main successors to that excellent news app is now available on Android.

This week, Wildcard, after being available on iOS for some time, made the jump to Google’s operating system.

Besides its beautiful design, one of Wildcard’s best additions is its Collections feature. For some stories, especially ones that are currently dominating the news cycle, the app collects about five to eight articles from a variety of sources. This allows users to gain a more complete understanding of each story, as well shift through a publication’s bias.

If there’s an issue with Wildcard, it’s that most of the stories have a U.S. slant. For Canadians, and Wildcard users around the world, the app doesn’t do a particularly good job of curating national and local content. In my time with Wildcard, however, I have seen Canadian publications like the CBC featured. In that particular instance, the broadcaster was reporting on an international story related to a severe food shortage in Madaya, Syria.

Likewise, the interface, though slick and pleasant to navigate, can be a bit sluggish to load at times — at least on my Snapdragon 810-equipped Xperia Z5. However, Wildcard’s developers have wisely included the option to view any story as a card (as opposed to the webpage the article was originally published on), which helps speed up things significantly.

Still, those issues aside, Wildcard is an overall great experience. Since downloading the app, I’ve managed to find several interesting articles I don’t think I would have discovered otherwise.

Download Wildcard from the iTunes App Store and Google Play Store.