Twitter Improves Performance With Updated Android App

Clint Boulton eWEEK USA 2012. Ziff Davis Enterprise Inc. All Rights Reserved,

Twitter has given its Android app a makeover so that it is now faster and features a new tweet details page

Twitter has upgraded its Twitter for Android application to include a number of new features including a speedier-scrolling timeline and a new tweet details page.

Twitter for Android has been fairly decent for users since the microblog launched it in late April.

Users of the app could tweet and share links and photos and access their timeline with the home screen widget.

New Features

Twitter for Android also let users see a tweet location on a map thanks to Twitter’s geotagging tool and see tweets in any application that uses Android’s QuickContact bar.

Still, some tools were lacking in Twitter for Android that users of other Twitter apps enjoyed. For example, in the new app, users may access the new tweet details page just by clicking on a tweet.

This feature, which makes it a snap to reply to tweets, retweet or favorite, is already available in Twitter for iPhone, Twitter for iPad and Twitter for Windows Phone, which Twitter launched last week.

Other improvements include:

  • Pull to refresh, another feature copied from the Twitter for iPhone app, lets users pull down the screen to load new tweets.
  • Swipe to Reveal lets users swipe across a tweet to see profiles, share a tweet or reply to a tweet.
  • Quote a Tweet, which lets users click the retweet icon to quote a tweet.
  • High-res avatar photos are also now part of the mix.

This new version of Twitter for Android is available from Android Market on devices with Android 2.1 and higher. Users may also scan the barcode here to grab the app.

Developer Angst

Twitter stirred civil unrest among its platform developers in April after it launched Twitter for BlackBerry and Twitter for iPhone.

App programmers believed Twitter was trying to cut them out of the action by launching official versions of Twitter apps that competed with their own clients.

Twitter strove to reassure that this is part of the natural evolution of its business and urged programmers to work on other vertical apps for the platform.