The app allows tabbed browsing, but when there are no active tabs the "Show tabs" icon is not displayed.

This seems unusual as any application that allows tabbed browsing doesn't have a state in which there are no tabs (at least in the ones I use). That's because it considers any page including it's home page as just another page in the tab and hence there's no way of having zero tabs.

The app unlike the browsers has a zero tabbed state when all tabs are closed or none has been created. This seems to be a place in which the app seems to be deviating from other implementations and thus consistency is missing with other tabbed implementations.

Also it would be better if the "Show tabs" icon were shown all the time instead of hiding it when there are no tabs. It could possibly improve consistency.

Further a new user would not be immediately aware that the app supports tabbed browsing of articles. For example, my sister wasn't aware that the app supports tabbed browsing until I brought it to her notice. She might have noticed it if the "Show tabs" icon was shown when she opened the app initially.

Possible solution
The app seems to be considering the "Home page" as a special page. It would be nice if the app considers it as just another page like an article and it could be shown whenever a new tab is created instead of the Today's featured article. Thus there would no case in which the app has zero tabs.