There are only a few really noteworthy Twitter clients for Android, but one stands out above all the rest in terms of sheer features. Read on to see why we think Twidroyd is the best Twitter client around for Android.
Twidroyd
Platform: Android
Price: Free, Pro available for $3.98
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- View your home feed, mentions, direct messages, retweets, favourites, lists and user profiles.
- Manage multiple accounts in either a single timeline or separate timelines
- Search for tweets, users or tweets from a certain location
- Native retweet support
- A live preview of links through a split-screen interface
- Suggests users you might like to follow
- Mute certain users for a specific period of time
- Home screen widgets
- Built-in URL shortening, photo posting and video posting from a number of different services
- Direct sharing from other apps like the gallery, camera, and your browser
- Geolocation support
- Notifications for tweets, mentions, and direct messages
- Customisable themes
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Like many of our App Directory apps, Twidroyd gains the title of “best” for its insane amount of features. From being able to share photos and videos with multiple services, to managing multiple accounts any way you like, to the live preview of links, it’s got nearly everything you could want in a Twitter client and more. Just take a laundry list of features above and you’ll realise that sheer power is where Twidroyd excels. Not only that, but its settings page is full of even the tiniest tweaks that let you really customise how you view your Twitter feeds.
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As powerful as Twidroyd is, the one area in which it falls short is its interface. It’s not so much that it’s hard to navigate, because it isn’t. Like most Twitter apps, you have a bar at the bottom that lets you quickly see your timeline, mentions, messages, search and a button at the end for more options. There’s a new tweet button and a refresh button at the top, and you can get around pretty easily.
The problem is, it’s so inconsistent with every other Android app out there. To access its settings and extra options, you’d think you’d hit the Menu button on your phone, and you’d be wrong. Everything else in the app — accessing the settings, quitting, seeing the latest trends — is all done from the “more options” button in the app’s UI itself. The only thing in the actual menu is jumping to the top of the Twitter stream, which is a weird place for it. Again, this isn’t the worst offence in the world, but it can make things pretty frustrating. Little things like this can make an app really frustrating to use. And while it’s unparalleled in terms of features, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make me sigh every once in a while.
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If you don’t like Twidroyd but still want a full-featured client, Seesmic is another really great app for Android. It has a lot of the same features of Twidroyd, like built-in URL shortening, sharing, profile viewing, lists, and so on, but it doesn’t really go above and beyond like Twidroyd does with its Live Preview or muting. Furthermore, it doesn’t let you tweak every dark corner of the app like Twidroyd does. Where it does excel, however, is its interface. It has an incredibly smooth, easy to use interface that, while somewhat similar to Twidroyd’s, is just more pleasant to use. Honestly, if I could give the “best” title to both these apps, I would. They’re very, very close, and it’s more about what you prefer. If you want to configure every little piece of your experience, Twidroyd’s the one to go with, where if you want a smooth, almost iPhone-like experience with a bit less configurability, Seesmic is the winner.
Apart from that, there are only a few other noteworthy Twitter clients. The official Twitter client also has a very nice interface, but doesn’t have nearly the amount of configurability the other two have. There’s also Twicca, which has a great, fast, minimal interface with a nice plugin system that’s definitely worth checking out. There are a few others out there, of course, so if you think we left out a rather noteworthy client, let us know about it in the comments.
Lifehacker’s App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories. This week, we’re focusing on Twitter clients.
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