The lack of an app is something for it. Literally every app of some website has the worse experience. Even worse the website will keep begging you to install their shitty app.
I'd say Apollo (or Reddit is Fun on Android) is a heck of a lot better than new Reddit, and about as good as old Reddit. And Google Maps' app beats their site by a county mile on iOS.
There's no good Hacker News client for mobile though, at least one that's better than the web page. Not that I'm saying someone should make one either, the site is responsive as heck.
as my Hacker News app, it does me. I like that I can vote on comments and stories, but it's irritating that I can't post via it. On a medium sized phone screen, the mobile web experience of HN is not optimum in my opinion.
HN has been a really bad experience on mobile for me. It's really difficult to tap links accurately. In particular collapsing and expanding comment threads is super annoying. I've been using Hews from the Play store instead.