ESPNCricinfo iPhone app revamped in time for ICC Champions Trophy

ESPNCricinfo has released a major update to its iPhone app hours before the Champions Trophy begins in England on Thursday.

The version 3.0 of the app, redesigned from the ground up, is a big improvement on the earlier versions, and suffers from none of the lags that affected the performance of its predecessor. NDTV Gadgets had early access to the app a few days before its release, and we were quite impressed by the UI.

While the app takes some time to load and fetch data on first launch, almost everything beyond that is pretty snappy over Wi-Fi as well as 3G. The stories now include a quick summary, a (human) edited version to provide you the highlights of a story in case you don't have time to read the full story. Popular sections of the site like magazine and blogs, get a section of their own.

The app includes a revamped live coverage section, with ball by ball commentary, as well as news, photos, points table, graphs and player profiles from every international game and a full screen mode. There's also a section that lets you access results and fixtures by month, team and series or tournaments. You can also favourite teams and subscribe to match alerts.

The updated ESPNCricinfo app for iPhone also includes quizzes, stats, player profiles and other interactive sections to keep you going on non-matchdays.

However, the app is not without rough edges. On at least a couple of occasions, the app got stuck with a rotating cricket ball in the middle and we couldn't access any content. We had to quit the app and restart it for things to get back to normal. We hope ESPNCricinfo irons out these quirks soon.

An update to the Android app to bring it on the par with the new iPhone app is on the horizon, ESPNCricinfo told NDTV Gadgets.

The updated ESPNCricinfo iPhone app will be competing with the likes of Cricbuzz, Yahoo Cricket and the NDTV Cricket app.

A list of the new features is included below.

• Revamped Match Companion Social Scorecard Experience to offer the most comprehensive coverage of a match with faster score updates, related news and multi-media stories and rich statistics.
• Favourite what you like, to read offline later.
• Social Integration to share content through Facebook and Twitter.
• ESPNcricinfo Conversations for users to read and post comments through the Facebook login.
• Mobile story that tailors content for ease of use and speed on mobile, across all stories.
• High resolution Photo Gallery for an enhanced visual experience on mobile devices, with the option to view as a slideshow.
• Interactive Quiz and Glossary section for both the aficionado and the novice.
• Exclusive content from the website like Number crunching, Quote Unquote and Did You Know now available on the mobile app as well
• Enhanced Alerts and Push Notifications covering score updates, breaking news and trivia.
• Enhanced Player Profiles to know all you ever wanted to know about your favourite players.
• Records and Rankings to know the movers and shakers from players and teams in test, ODI and T20 formats.
• Enhanced personal settings to customise the experiences based on individual preferences.

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