• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, September 18, 2013

 Yahoo on Wednesday unveiled the latest update of its flagship app for the iPhone in connection with the release of iOS 7. The redesign includes the ability to save articles, get alerts for breaking news and eye candy like cinemagraphs.

The upgrade is part of Yahoo’s broader overhaul of key content properties across the desktop and mobile, with the aim of providing a more modern and consistent look and across its main sites and screens. The Yahoo app got a major revamp in April with the integration of a Summly-style news feed following the Web portal’s acquisition of the newsreader app.

The latest version of the app still features story summaries after clicking on a headline, but the feed is now more consistent with the news feed on the redesigned Yahoo desktop home page. That means the app feed also includes Streaming Ads -- Yahoo’s native ad format.

Among the main new features is “My Saves,” which allows users to tag content for later reading in mobile -- and soon on the desktop as well. “That means that if you save something while you’re on your computer, you can read it on your phone later,” stated a Yahoo blog post about the new app today. Yahoo app users will also now receive alerts on breaking stories at the top of the screen as well as indicating how many articles have been added since the app was last accessed.

Instead of showing headlines and summaries overlaid on photos, the new Yahoo app shows thumbnail images alongside headlines as on the desktop. But after clicking through, stories are topped by larger images, some of which include cinemagraphs -- photos that have moving elements. This tweak reflects integration of the Tumblr aesthetic, following Yahoo’s purchase of the social blogging service in May.

Yahoo said the changes overall are intended to make the app “cleaner, faster and more engaging.” According to comScore data released this month, the flagship Yahoo app isn’t as popular as some of its other apps tied to specific properties. Yahoo Stocks and Yahoo Weather were the only Yahoo apps among the top 15 based on reach as of July.

On the mobile Web, however, Yahoo ranked third behind Google and Facebook, with 81.7% reach among U.S. iPhone and Android smartphone users. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer last week said at an industry conference that Yahoo now has 350 million monthly active mobile users. Internally, she noted that the company’s mobile team has grown by a factor of 10, with its series of acqui-hires playing a big part.