BBC Sport launches smartphone app for Android

BBC Sport has launched a free mobile application for Android  users.

Arriving in time for the second half of the Six Nations and the climax of the football season, the app provides news of all major sports, along with live text coverage of many different sports.

The app has a live football scores section and the ability to play live and on-demand video.

A version for Apple's iOS devices was launched earlier in 2013.

Key Features

The core feature set of the Android app remains consistent with iOS and briefly comprises of the following for all versions of Android from 2.2 Froyo and above:

  • Top stories and breaking news from a wide range of sports
  • Live text commentaries on all the big football fixtures, from all the major events and the daily Sportsday live
  • A whole new football section which includes fixtures, results and live scores for each competition/league
  • Pages for every UK football match and the latest football transfer gossip
  • Live video streaming and video clips accessed through media asset pages
  • The ability to share pages with your friends, through email, Facebook and Twitter

The app's football live scores section allows you to follow the action, whether you're at the match, or out and about.

Keith Mitchell blog

"You will notice is that the same web-based text news, commentaries, fixtures, results and live scores content is delivered in the browser and in the app to all mobile devices we support including Blackberry and Windows Mobile"

For football, it provides a league-by-league overview of the latest scores and goalscorers at a glance, with dedicated match pages for more in-depth information, bringing together starting line-ups, match stats, live text commentary and the post-match report.

The fixtures and results section has been developed to help you keep on top of all the major UK and international football competitions simply by selecting any day in the season from the app's calendar.

Live text coverage of England's Test matches, rugby union's Six Nations and the upcoming Formula 1 season will also be available.

Keith Mitchell, technical lead for BBC Sport's mobile services, wrote on the BBC Internet blog: "I know that many of you have been waiting for this app, so I'm very pleased that Android users can get the best of BBC Sport on their mobiles as well. The launch of the BBC Sport app for the Android platform is another important step in serving sports fans across multiple platforms.

"Since the launch of the iOS app in the UK last month, we have added team pages and media to our mobile web site which are also available in the Android app and the UK and International iOS apps.

"The football team pages provide a dynamically generated page per football team and include top stories, links to team specific fixtures, results and competitions in which they compete. Over the coming weeks we'll add more functionality to these pages.

Speaking ahead of the launch of the iOS app, head of interactive for BBC Sport Ben Gallop added: "Our aim is to provide the best of BBC Sport wherever you are. A third of traffic to the BBC Sport site already comes from mobile - a proportion that rises to more than 40% at the weekend when live sport is going on."

You can download the app from here,  while the Apple version is available from iTunes here.