FreeRange RSS Reader

No longer works. Service has been shut down.

FreeRange is a stand alone RSS reader application.  It used to be a paid app with a $40/year subscription.  There was also a free version that was limited to 10 feeds. Last year FreeRange was acquired by Handmark who eliminated the paid option and made the free one unlimited.

FreeRange works pretty well on my i776. It takes a while to download  new items if you have a lot of unread ones but you can start reading while it’s still downloading.  Unlike the other free RSS readers I’ve tried it displays the images in feeds.

FreeRange comes pre-configured with ten popular feeds including ESPN, CNN, Engadget, BoingBoing and Wired.  You can add more feeds by picking them from a list within the app.  There doesn’t seem to be anyway to add feeds that aren’t in the list by URL from within the app. A full range of feed management options including; adding feeds by URL, importing a feed list from another reader and linking FreeRange with a Google Reader account are available on the web at FreeRangeinc.com

FreeRange does have a few quirks:

• Like many apps on iDEN phones, the OK key doesn’t work, you need to use the green “Call” button instead.
• When you start up FreeRange, the option to login to an existing FreeRange account is hidden off screen. You can reach it by scrolling down past the “Create a new account” option and pressing the Call key.
• A couple of times while running the app I got a Java connection error that caused FreeRange to go into “Flight Mode” and stop updating. If this happens you can get it working again by backing out to the list of feed, pressing the menu key and choosing “Settings “and then clicking “Turn Flight Mode off”.

If spite of the quirks FreeRange is by far the best standalone RSS reader I’v found that works on iDEN phones.

Type: Freeware
Vendor: Freerange Communications- Product Page, Help Pages, Forum.
Data Connection Required: Yes
Supported iDEN phones: All Falcon Series (i776, i465, i9, i290, etc.)

Downloading uses paid data. Downloads are for Java ME phones only.

To download and install click here: DOWNLOAD (jad)