Our initial impression of Twitter for BlackBerry comes a little later than most. I guess the unofficial BlackBerry blog isn’t big time enough to be on the list of blogs RIM contacts when they want to put a preview of an application out. Our first thought, however, are about the same as most everyone else that did a review…
Is this the best that RIM could come up with?
I will say one nice thing about Twitter for BlackBerry smartphones. I like how it looks on the BlackBerry Storm. Beyond that, Twitter for BlackBerry doesn’t even warrant a full review. It is a pre-release version and RIM could fix a bunch of stuff before they release it, but, to make a long story short, it is simply too slow.
When RIM updates the pre-release or puts out a production release that works, we’ll do a proper review. Until then, we recommend UberTwitter, which today released Beta-7, or Social Scope, if you can get into the Beta.
For those of you that want to truly see how slow Twitter for BlackBerry is first hand, we hear there is a leaked version out. You might want to do a quick search before it gets yanked.
Are you really surprised? The Facebook app is so slow it’s basically unusable, and it’s been that way since its inception. It’s no surprise to me that the Twitter application has a similar problem.
Actually, I am just a little. Surprised may not be the right word. Disappointed is probably more appropriate.
At the end of the day, RIM has tremendous advantages over third party developers when creating software for the BlackBerry. There isn’t a perceived, but, and actual difference in the level of application that can run on a BlackBerry as compared to the iPhone, Adnroid, Windows Mobile, and even WebOS. You would think that, with an application as popular as Twitter, RIM would develop a home-run of an app.
Maybe Twitter for BlackBerry will be, but, the pre-release, in my opinion misses the mark in so many ways that it isn’t even worth fully reviewing.
2 reasons for this.
1. Stone age BB OS doesn’t allow for a really good application to be developed, such as the types that are designed for Android, the iphone or Palm.
2. RIM itself. I don’t envision RIM’s software people as hip or innovative. They are probably a bunch of aging types who still pine for the days of DOS or WIn 3.1.
Until both of these issues are addressed, BB apps will be nothing but lackluster and ugly.
I agree with both your points. RIM’s OS and SDK doesn’t make it easy for programmers to be creative in designing their apps. I’ve tried!
Well, it’s certainly a great start. The problem is that RIM takes forever to update its official apps (like Facebook for instance), and if we are hoping to see new added features and better UI and maybe a changed icon or two in there, then we probably have to wait for a long long….(3 hours later)….long long time until we see a new build.
Also I don’t see TweetGenius gaining anymore profit since RIM will have its own free (non-ad-based) client available in BlackBerry App World on ever BlackBerry sold.
Also UberTwitter might as well take off their ads from their app.
I think UbertTwitter, and TweetGenius will be fine, even if RIM addresses the speed. Everyone else, less maybe SocialScope should be concerned.
Yea I agree completely, it’s a really good start. I was really surprised at the amount of polish, and even more surprised that the only real problem was the speed and cacheing. But I agree with the update issues, it’ll be hell. And as fast and FaceBook and Twitter change month to month, they need to revise their strategy about getting updates out.
But I wonder if it’s the same general team that works on social networking apps by RIM or what…?
Polished? I guess it doesn’t take much to impress you. Look at a similar app on any other platform and see what polished is. BB apps ugly and limited.
I don’t know why you say it’s slow. I am running the leaked version on my BlackBerry Bold 9000 and it’s running as fast as UberTwitter on Rogers Wireless 3G network. I am not saying RIM’s Twitter client is as good as UberTwitter when you compare their features, but at least it doesn’t have advertisement and you don’t need to have it working in the background at all times to get notifications, it’s completely transparent like Facebook.
I would completely and without a doubt adopt RIM’s Twitter client for all my Twitter updates and put all other clients aside.
Ditto. It’s just as slow as SocialScope as far as I’m concerned since it only allows you to refresh every 5 minutes.
Bottom line: will the official release slow your phone AS much as facebook? And, I’m curious to know what you all think of the Snaptu app?
The beta definitely had issues with speed, however, the official client which has been updated a couple of times already seems to be just fine as far as speed goes.
I took a look at Snaptu back February but uninstalled it after a day or so. The integrated Twitter client doesn’t stand up to any of the dedicated Twitter apps out there in my opinion. I think what folks that like Snaptu like about it is that it gives you a bunch of apps in a single interface.