Some people like to play games on their phones, others like photography or social networking. I like news apps to keep abreast of what's happening in the world. Here are 5 great news apps.

I have more news apps on my phone than any other category and I like to know what is happening in the world, from politics in the US, the technology being developed in UK, to the latest developments in China.

All news apps are slightly different and so I find that one just isn’t enough. There is a lot of overlap between news apps and an important story will appear in all of them, but there is a lot going on besides the one big new story.

To see a broad range of news items, you need a broad range of news apps.

Each news app have different sources. Top new sources are often the same, but beyond the main headlines you will find differences and stories in one that aren't in another. Each news app has different priorities, so a story that is buried deep in one and easily missed may be displayed prominently in another and will catch your eye.

Some news apps are better at showing local news, stories about things happening where you live, even the town or city you are in.

Some news apps are better and international coverage and you can learn what is happening in other countries. International events can have an effect on you.

There are dozens of Android news apps in the Google Play Store, so let's take a look at some of the best ones. Here are my favourite five.

Google News

Google News is frequently updated with new designs, navigation, features and so on, but it has always been a great source of news. Google scrapes the information from a variety of news sources and presents the stories in an easy to access form in the app. The preferred country or region can be selected, but most people will choose the one they live in.

The home screen these days is your briefing, which shows a weather icon in the top right corner and the top 5 news stories below. Below this is a long list of news stories and some similar ones are grouped, with a View full coverage link below to get more stories on that topic.

Select the Headlines tab at the bottom and across the top are sections like World, Business, Technology, Entertainment, Sports and more. Select one of these and a list of news stories is displayed.

The Favourites section enables you to choose which topics to follow, which news sources to get stories from, and to add locations, such as the town, city or area you live in to get local news.

A Newsstand section enables you to browse many free news and magazine sources and sites, and there are also subscription sources too. For example, you can subscribe or get a free trial with paid sources like The New York Times, The Washington Post and others,.

Google News is an excellent news app and if you have no other news app on your phone, you should at least have this one. It has some useful configuration options and battery-saving features.

Microsoft News

Microsoft News is an alternative news source that is both similar, but different. It shows your country-specific news feed, but many other countries can be selected in the settings, including US, UK, International. Some are available in different languages, so you could choose the Spanish language version of the US news for example.

Apart from choosing the edition (location), there isn't much choice in the news sources and it is automatic. However, across the top is a list of topics and you can swipe through and select Google, microsoft, Apple, NASA, Astronomy, Top Stories, World News, Entertainment, Business, Technology and many more. These show the latest news in those subject areas. There is also a Local tab and it detects your location and shows local relevant news stories.

There are different layout options and you choose from standard, compact or text-only. That last one would obviously reduce data usage. It lacks the news sources customisation that Google News has, but it just works and it is basically a phone version of the Microsoft News app on Windows 10.

Reuters TV: Video News

The name of the app says it all, Reuters TV: Video News. This is a news app that shows videos instead of text. You don't read the news, you watch it instead and this makes it unique. Some news apps do contain videos, but this one is video-only and it is great.

Open the app and the home screen shows a collection of news stories as a sequence of short videos that are two to five minutes long. The whole collection adds up to around 15 minutes and you can select an individual video or sit back and watch the whole lot. It is excellent and a great way to catch up on what is happening in the world.

The Featured section organises videos into topics and each topic contains multiple videos. For example, the This Week in Tech topic has 19 stories and lasts 38 minutes, The World at Work has 16 stories and lasts 73 minutes, Generation maker: America's new breed of man has 12 stories and lasts 42 minutes.

Videos are streamed, but there is an option to download them so they can be viewed offline, or you can restrict them to Wi-Fi only. There is a choice of United States or International news, which affects which video topics are included.

Reuters TV is different and gives you a different perspective on the news events happening right now.

AP News

AP News is the app from the Associated Press, a US based not-for-profit news agency. It has hundreds of news bureaus in over one hundred countries and has won many awards.

The home feed shows mostly US and international news and not your local country's news. However, select the Topics tab and there is a Near You section that shows news stories for your part of the world and whatever country you live in. It would be useful if this could be set as the default.

All news apps take their news stories from other news websites, but AP News writes its own stories. That makes the content unique and for this reason it is useful to have the app in addition to one of the others. There is a video section that shows news videos and a radio section with audio news that is updated hourly.

This is another must-have news app with excellent and up-to-date news information.

World Newspapers

World Newspapers is different to the other apps and it does not contain or show any news content itself. However, it is a great source of local news.

What you do is select a country. The app then shows a long and comprehensive list of newspaper websites in that country. There are big national newspapers that cover the whole country and small local newspapers that serve a small area like a town or city.

Select a newspaper and that website is displayed. World Newspapers keeps a toolbar at the top, but there is a button to go full screen and hide it so you only see the newspaper site. The app has basically bookmarked every newspaper website in many countries and makes it easy to switch from one to another.

You can select the US and read the Arizona Daily Star, CNN, the Denver Post, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle and many more newspapers. Switch to the UK and you can read the Coventry Telegraph, Daily Mail, Financial Times, Liverpool Echo, Sheffield Telegraph, the BBC and so on. Switch to another country and there is another list of local newspaper websites.

There are many countries to choose from and more news than you can ever consume. One slight irritation is that when a newspaper websites has ads, you see them too. This means you see more adverts than with the other apps. It's not World Newspapers' fault, but the newspaper sites.