Review: History Daily
Score:
71%
History Daily is one of those fun little apps that seems curious when you come across it in the Windows Phone store. The description is simple; "Every day, get one short story about what happened on this day in history" and it delivers on that promise.
Version Reviewed: 1.2.2.0
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It's not a comprehensive look at history, commonly summing up the issue in three or four paragraphs. That's enough for me to read before my first cup of tea in the morning, and if it piques my interest then I'll head out on to the Internet to find out some more. To be be honest, that happens every third day or so.
To help with that, each story has an info button that will start you on your way around the Internet to follow up that day's story
The story is laid out with the graphical look of a desktop flip calendar, with an image to catch your eye. A quick tap and it's into the page with the image and text ready for you to read. You can also swipe left and right to look at the daily history from previous days - although naturally you can't look ahead to what's going to happen tomorrow (even though it's actually a story about what has happened in the past!)
All the daily stories are archived, and the top panorama screen will let you explore the recent archive, with the last six days represented by a tile carrying the headline, the date, and the illustrative image.
You can go further back with the 'more' button, which takes you to a traditional list view, carrying the same information as the tiles from the previous view.
Part of the challenge when designing an application like this is making sure that people remember to open it and read about the history every day. Windows Phone is actually very well suited to this, with a number of UI options that can be updated by the app. The lock screen can be run by History Daily so you'll always be aware that something new is waiting for you.
But the bigger opportunity has been missed, and this is my only real disappointment with History Daily. You see, the app's Live Tile is nothing more than an icon. It would be nice to have something show up on the tile each day - after all, the code is there for the lock screen to be updated, and the archive page tiles are the right size.
For me though, it's the lock screen that is the mental nudge to remind me to see what has happened in the world. It's a nice little bit of trivia in the morning, and while it might seem quite light and fluffy, it's something that makes my phone feel a little bit more personal and entertaining.
And I think that makes History Daily a success.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at