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The official Twitter app for Android is great at the basics, but it might leave power users wanting more. That said, its reliable performance and slick design make it a good option to at least consider.
Each time you boot up the Twitter app, it opens to your Home screen and lands on the last tweet that you read. Tap the Home tab to quickly jump to the top, or tap on any individual tweet to pop it out to a new screen. On this new screen, you get options to Reply, Retweet, Favorite, or Share, and in some cases you can view thumbnails images or other rich content contained in the tweet (for links to Twitter's partner sites). What I don't like about this system is that you have to press the Back button to return to your timeline from an expanded tweet. I would much prefer to see expanded tweets inline (like you can on the Web site), without having to pop out to a new screen each time. Also, it would've been nice to get collapsible previews of links inline as well.
The Connect tab charts your interactions with your Twitter friends, showing your mentions and letting you know when others retweet or begin following you. Next to that is Discover, which houses several items including relevant stories, an activity stream (what you're connections are doing on Twitter), trending hash tags, suggestions for who to follow, categories, and a find-friends function. While you likely won't be spending the majority of your time in these tabs, they are convenient for the more active Twitter users.
The final tab shows your Twitter profile, which has recently been refreshed with Facebook-style "Headline Photos" as a backdrop to your primary avatar. While it's not exactly a game-changer, the addition does let you get a bit more creative with the page. The new thumbnail carousel is also a nice touch, as it shows photos from your recent posts on Twitter. And of course, you can also see your Direct Messages, manage your lists and favorites, access saved searches, and more, just like before.
Sending tweets from your mobile device is even easier than doing so on the Web, thanks to the global Compose button that is always accessible, no matter where you are in the app. Autocomplete makes mentioning friends a snap, and you can easily attach photos and location stamps to your tweets. In fact, with the newest features added to the app, the photo attachment button pulls up your device's Gallery right within the Compose interface, making the process faster than ever. You can even switch between multiple accounts right from the Compose screen.
From Twitter's Compose screen, you can quickly and easily switch between accounts and attach photos.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jaymar Cabebe/CNET)Twitter also offers a handful of editing tools for polishing your photos before tweeting them out. There's a simple tool for scaling and cropping and an auto-enhance function that does an admirable job of balancing colors and light. Lastly, Twitter offers eight different photo filters, which is convenient. Unfortunately, though, they need to dial up the intensity a few notches, as their effects seem a bit mild. All that said, I appreciate the addition of photo filters and tools, but I still prefer processing photos in other apps and then sending them over to Twitter for posting.
While the official Twitter app offers a few advanced features, it still needs a bit more under the hood to please its most active users. List management and saved searches are a great start, but the app could stand to incorporate other features like scheduled tweets, and filters for trending topics. Also, I love that the app supports multiple accounts, but as it is now, you cannot post to both simultaneously, which is a bit of an inconvenience.
