Twitter's official BlackBerry app has lagged behind third-party competitor UberSocial (formerly UberTwitter) since its debut, but the social network has made significant improvements with version 2.0. Released officially in early July, Twitter for BlackBerry 2.0 is a more polished and stable program than previous versions, though it still has occasional issues with crashes and lockups.
A Pleasing Visual Interface
The visual interface of Twitter for BlackBerry 2.0 is consistent with Twitter's official apps for other platforms. A series of small buttons at the top of the screen provide a convenient way to switch between the main timeline, mentions, and direct messages without bringing up the main menu. This functionality is similar to UberSocial's UberBar shortcut menu, the difference being that Twitter's icon bar is always displayed rather than only appearing when you scroll to the top of the screen.
The bar also contains shortcuts for accessing lists and trending topics, along with the search bar and your profile. These features all function comparably to UberSocial, and the trending topics list makes the option for changing the trend location setting more accessible- it's at the top of the page in Twitter for BlackBerry, while UberSocial places it in the context menu.
Twitter for Blackberry uses a larger display font than UberSocial by default, so while tweets are more legible, fewer display per page and scrolling can be somewhat sluggish. It's more prone to bogging down while loading avatars than UberSocial, and this sticky scrolling means the program occasionally feels as though it's freezing up when it actually isn't.
All the Twitter Client Essentials
As far as basic features go, Twitter for BlackBerry offers all the Twitter client essentials. The tweet composition box is nice and simple, and is an overlay rather than a separate screen as in UberSocial. Tweets continue loading in the background while you're typing, and Twitter has added friend picker and hashtag picker functions for auto-completing usernames and hashtags.
Location is finally enabled fully in version 2.0, and adding location to tweets is a simple matter of clicking an icon in the tweet composition box. There's also a button for adding photos, and the media previews are larger than in UberSocial. Unfortunately, they also contribute to the sluggish scrolling and take slightly longer to load than UberSocial's tiny thumbnails.
Twitter for BlackBerry offers two options for photo uploads, Yfrog and TwitPic. Both are preferable to UberSocial's choices, MyPict.me and Lockerz, and photo uploading in Twitter for BlackBerry is slightly faster and more reliable. But photos are the only media option, as there's no way to upload videos from your phone.
Improved Tweet Interaction
Interaction with tweets has also been improved in version 2.0, and again takes much from UberSocial. The View Conversation option allows you to see all the replies in a back-and-forth exchange, and the "Go to User" feature jumps directly to a selected user's timeline.
Twitter for BlackBerry still lacks a true old-style retweet feature, though it retains the "Quote Tweet" option from previous versions. It functions in much the same way, but places quotes around the tweet instead of using the familiar "RT:" format. It's clear that Twitter prefers its own native retweet option, and it works smoothly here.
Some Features Are Still Lacking
In spite of these improvements, Twitter for BlackBerry still lacks some of UberSocial's features. The ability to view retweets of your own tweets is something Twitter itself offers in its web interface, so it's odd that it hasn't been incorporated into the BlackBerry app. It also doesn't offer the option to temporarily mute a particular user or tweets that include specified keywords, as UberSocial does.
Twitter for BlackBerry also doesn't offer support for multiple accounts, a feature that is included in the latest version of its Android app. While of little importance for individuals, multiple account support is crucial for the enterprise market, and since BlackBerry still holds an important place with business users, the lack of this feature is a major omission. (Currently, HootSuite is the only BlackBerry app with multiple account support.)
Finally, Twitter for BlackBerry still lags behind UberSocial in speed, mostly due to the avatar and image loading issues. While less crash-prone than previous versions, it still locks up when attempting to clear multiple direct message notifications, and occasionally when loading large numbers of tweets. These crashes are severe enough to necessitate a complete system reboot.
Still, Twitter for BlackBerry 2.0 improves on its predecessors in almost every respect, and is the first version that can legitimately be considered serious competition for UberSocial.
Sources:
- Baez, Stefany: "Twitter for BlackBerry 2.0 Now Available For Download". N4BB.com, July 7, 2011.
- O'Dell, Jolie: "Twitter for Android Gets Push Notifications & Multiple Accounts". Mashable, July 13, 2011.
Paul Brown - Paul Ferrell Brown graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1994 with a B.A. in English literature, and completed his M.A. in ...
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