What’s the catch? Aggressive ad load — reported by 51 users.
Analyzed automatically from 3 independent signals that had to agree — not a hands-on test, and not human-reviewed.
This analysis describes version 26.9.30 of the app, analyzed 2026-10-05 . The app may have changed since.
The store currently lists version 26.9.30, updated 2026-09-28.
What the analysis found
The catch list 1
Charges we publish at a strength we stand behind: measured from an artefact, agreed by independent sources, or reported by enough users to clear that charge's own published bar.
What reviewers said
Verbatim excerpts from public store reviews, shown as corroborating user reports. They are not Appworthy audit evidence, and a quotation is not proof of the finding it sits under.
Aggressive ad load
Been my news app of choice for several years now. — SmartNews has a good clean UI, not nearly as many ads as its competitors do and is generally pretty fast and reliable. It’s a lot like Google News but with more sources and a wider…
Gone downhill — Too many news sources that are not legit journalism and way too many ads. It used to be good but not anymore
Too many ads — Had to search for the actual news between ads. Even when we open a news article we need to find what is ad and what is the news.
How the automated analysis works
This assessment is produced automatically. Three independent signals are read — user reviews, the store listing and the store privacy disclosure — and each candidate finding is filed under the sources that support it.
No charge stands on one kind of evidence — with one published exception. A finding is either a measured fact that anyone can reproduce (an ad SDK is in the package; every subscription bills weekly; the privacy label omits a tracker we can see), or it is an interpretation — and an interpretation needs independent sources to agree before it reaches the catch list. The exception is a harm only users can see: a charge may publish from reviews alone, as “Reported by N users”, once enough reviewers raise it to clear that charge’s own published bar. That agreement rule is what replaced the human reviewer, not a model’s confidence.
There is no overall score, on purpose. A 0–99 number was published here until 2026-09-15. It was withdrawn because it discriminated too weakly to be the instrument — 44.7% of every pair of apps tied — and because a single number is a verdict where a count is an observation. What publishes instead is a row of measurements, each of which says what was counted and, where we could not look, says that instead.
Findings under One source only are real reports we do not stand behind as findings. They are shown because withholding them entirely would hide a genuine complaint, and labelled because publishing them as charges would be an accusation off a single source.
Several measurements above say “Not assessed” because no artefact we hold can answer them. A human review is what resolves those — and it can remove a favourable band as easily as add one.
Hands-on inspections are not yet open.