Review: Quartz app is like a knowledgeable friend texting you the news

Quartz is not the first service that pushes news notifications to the lock-screen of your phone. Nor is it the most customisable or specialised. But what sets this app apart is the pitch-perfect, charming tone in which the little messages arrive. There are straightforward business and financial bulletins and global political headlines, but also daily haikus about how the stock markets are performing, and lots of emoji, GIFs and sassy asides (like “sigh”, after a Trump update).

You can tell that this isn’t an automated bot; this is written by a team of smart, plugged-in experts who talk like real people and summarise things in a memorable way that comes with a specific tone and point of view.

And while it’s hard to imagine a huge market right now for a generalised news report that doesn’t learn from your preferences, and that talks like a millennial about both Kanye West and Chinese economic growth, a lot of critics are saying that Quartz is spearheading the “fut­ure of news”.

Once you download and open the app, you’ll get a message with a sentence-long report on the day’s biggest breaking news, designed to look like an iMessage conversation on an iPhone.

Then you'll get a couple of options: click on some amusing emoji related to what you just read to get a few more messages delving into the same subject, or choose another headline topic to read about. You can also opt to click on the previous message to be taken straight to the article that reported the story - these are from reputable sources such as the Financial Times, BBC and Bloomberg.

Once it’s installed, the notifications will start happening automatically: a buzz for “really big news” and silent alerts for a handful of other items that you can browse whenever you have a spare couple of minutes.

The app is more of a novelty item than a must-have right now, but if the next iteration involves the service adapting its output based on the user’s interests, as some experts are predicting it will, it could become indispensable.

Q&A: Jessica Holland expands on what the Quartz app has to offer the business reader:

Who’s behind it?

Quartz is a business-slanted news website launched in 2012 by the US company Atlantic Media, which also publishes The Atlantic magazine.

What was the idea behind it?

The app was launched by Quartz in February 2016 as a way of reinventing news consumption for mobile phones. The idea was that we’re all familiar with the experience of interacting through text, and it’s more intuitive to receive news updates this way rather than swiping through stories.

Which phones support the app?

It was originally released for iOS only, but is now on Android, too. There’s also a Quartz application for Apple Watch, which tells you how the US markets are doing with a single emoji – the screaming face, for example.

Is the news it delivers US-centric?

It does cover global news, but it is heavy on what’s happening in America as well as a few other big markets.

What’s the financial model?

It’s supported by a couple of key sponsors right now, with ads so unobtrusive you’d barely notice them. The app is free and there are no in-app purchases or upgrades. The future possibilities for partnerships, however, are endless.

Will my phone constantly be buzzing if I get it?

You can tweak the notification settings, but the default setting is that you’ll only get a buzz for “really, really big news”. Your phone will also light up silently a few times a day with a handful of other stories, charts, and a charming daily haiku (no, really) about the financial markets.