Twitter for Android has always felt a little behind compared to the iPhone version. I’ve preferred it to the other clients available on Android but always thought it had much room for improvement. In a move to change this and have a more consistent experience across platforms, Twitter has issued a 2.0 update for their Android app.
I immediately downloaded the update onto my Nexus One and here are here my thoughts after using it for a day. First off, it’s much faster. Navigating through the app feels a lot smoother and I definitely feel in control of the experience. The UI animations are much improved and seem to run at a decent frame-rate but they’re still not quite perfect.
The homepage is gone and now replaced with four tabs across the top (timeline, mentions, direct messages and lists). It makes for a cleaner look that confused me less often and I felt I knew where I was in the app most of the time. Speaking of knowing where I am, version 2.0 still fails to remember my position in the timeline once I’ve closed the app which is extremely frustrating. I hate getting forced back up to the most recent tweet when I have some catching up to do.
You now also get auto-complete for usernames which is essential in my mind. Start to mention someone in a tweet by typing @ and you get a list of username suggestions as you type letter by letter. Seriously, why doesn’t every Twitter app have this? Can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to save a draft of the message I’m sending to go look up a user I follow, annoying.
Lastly the search feature is also much improved. I mostly use it for searching through timelines and it got results back instantly. The app feels even more like the iPhone counterpart now and it still has the classic pull to refresh and swipe gestures that we’ve come to know and love.
This version is available for free to all Android users running 2.1 and above so go check it out. What’s your favourite new feature? If the official app is not your thing, which client do you like using these days?
[via Twitter blog]