GoodLooking for a free and easy-to-use Twitter client for your BlackBerry? The free TwitterBerry 0.8, the first product from independent developer Orangatame, offers a number of useful features. The latest version supports TwitPic, which lets you share photos on Twitter. It also works with next-generation BlackBerry handhelds like the Storm, the Bold 9000, and the Curve 8900, as well as all previous 8800s, Curves, Pearls, Flips, and even 8700, 7100, 7200, and 7520-series models dating back several years. It's a solid app, even if it doesn't have the features and flash that TweetGenius offers.
For this review, I tested TwitterBerry 0.8 on a BlackBerry Curve 8330 (Verizon) and on a BlackBerry Bold 9000 (AT&T). To download and install TwitterBerry 0.8, head to orangatame.com/ota/twitterberry/ from your BlackBerry's Web browser. Fire up the app and you see a mostly blank, white screen that asks, "What are you doing?" along with a running character count at the bottom. The Menu key displays a pop-up menu that lets you view the friends timeline, @replies, direct message list, the public timeline, your own page, a friend list, and options to send direct messages or configure the app.
The Friends Timeline displays small color icons of each friend, along with the appropriate user ID, part of the tweet, and when the tweet was sent. You can set TwitterBerry to update manually or set it to poll every minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and so on up to 120 minutes. If you have TwitterBerry set to manual updates and you haven't updated in a while, all of the time stamps adjust accordingly. So when you load TwitterBerry later, it correctly displays the last updates as "4 hours old" (or however long it has been) until it finishes loading new updates. The number of recent tweets you can see depends on your screen resolution. On the Curve 8330's 320-by-240-pixel LCD, I could view four at a time, while the Bold displayed six.
On the Friends Timeline screen, the menu options change as well. Here, you can open individual tweets to read them in full, refresh the page, favorite tweets, or follow or leave users. You can also open bit.ly or TinyURL links in your default browser. Keep in mind, however, that many linked pages are for desktop sites that may not render correctly, at least in the BlackBerry's built-in browser. Other pages, such as for @replies and direct messages, work exactly as you expect. The friend list lets you scroll through and display individual user's timelines; you can also send direct messages, replies, and follow or leave people from here as well.
You can send tweets only from the main page. If you're viewing one of the lists, you have to hit the Back key. That's one of the ways TweetGenius is better, since you can pop up the update balloon wherever you are in the app. On the plus side, TwitterBerry includes a spell-check option for the update page. The app also supports BlackBerry key shortcuts, such as hitting the Space key to scroll down a screen, or "T" to jump back to the top of the page. The TwitPic integration is also pretty simple. To send a picture, head to your media folder, press Menu, and select Send to TwitterBerry. When you launch TwitterBerry again, you'll see the picture attached as part of your next update.
TwitterBerry's UI isn't particularly attractive. In fact, there's virtually no eye candy at all; TweetGenius is much more visually appealing. The app doesn't really take advantage of the extra screen resolution available on the Bold or on the Curve 8900. I saw plenty of unused white space on various screens. All of the text and icons were left-justified, with nothing on the right. Performance-wise, TwitterBerry was usually very fast. Sometimes, however, updates took 30 seconds or more to load for no appreciable reason. This may not be TwitterBerry's fault, since the delays could be attributed to cellular data network problems. Still, there were a lot of these episodes during the review period.
TwitterBerry also doesn't pop up alerts on the home page, the way Facebook for BlackBerry or the handset's default message list does whenever a new item comes in, which is something TweetGenius can handle. Finally, TwitterBerry lacks most of TweetGenius's other advanced features, such as being able to insert your GPS location, the ability to track certain users more closely than others, and a comprehensive search capability (TwitterBerry has no search function at all). If you've got the $4.99 or $9.99 (depending on whether TweetGenius is still on sale) and you've got a next-generation handset, TweetGenius is more capable and more fun to use than TwitterBerry. But if you're using an older handset or just need the basics, it's tough to beat TwitterBerry's simple interface and ease of use—and it's free.
Techno Uptodate: Daily Updates on newly launched Gadgets, Gizmos, Mobiles, PC's & Laptops, Hacking, Gaming & Emerging Technological Trends.
Add this post:
