Will Seesmic for Android be the Tweetie of the Android Market?
Guest post by Jim Alden @TechFrog
Everything is about compromise right? There is no perfect situation in any aspect of life. Want an iPhone and the plethora of apps it offers? You must put a ring on the finger of AT&T. Want to be on another network? Fine, but you’ll have no access to that huge cookie jar of applications.
Although Android phones are not that new, multiple networks here in the US are adding them to their lineup. Motorola, HTC, Samsung are all manufacturing Android phones. Others including Dell, Acer, and even Google are also releasing Android phones. Although applications for the Android OS are small compared to iPhone, get ready to see that change. Soon.
Any geek, or social media aficionado such as myself will have at least a few app requirements. A good Twitter app sits very high on my list of requirements. I jumped into the world of Android with my new HTC Hero. Reading many application reviews, I found the most popular Twitter app on the platform was Twidroid. This app had all the function but not the look and feel I came to love about Tweetie and Twitterfon for iPhone which I access on my iPod Touch. My standards were high. I reluctantly used Twidroid thinking that there will be better apps soon. Then, out of nowhere, swooping out of the sky in full red cape was Seesmic to save the day.
Seesmic 1.0 for Android has a very smart and well thought out interface. The tabs are not tiny like in Twidroid. They are nicely placed, well thought out and my man-sized hands have no problems navigating the screen. Nice look, nice color, easy to scroll tweets, easy to change tabs. So far, it looked promising. Holding down a tweet, you get a pop up menu that allows for: Public Reply, Retweet, Direct Message, Favorite, and Share. Under the tabs on top, you have a narrow, but easy to push refresh instead of a small button. This is very nice as we usually refresh often.
When tweeting, you can easily attach a picture or video that will upload to your predetermined Twitpic, yFrog or MobyPicture or YouTube acct. (pre-set this in settings). You can also enter your bit.ly account information for URL shortening. My HTC Hero has a 5mp camera that would crash a couple other Twitter apps on the Android market. Seesmic, like Twidroid, smartly resizes the picture to accommodate the service receiving it. Another very smart addition to Seesmic is, unlike some other software, the Send button is on the top of the screen, so if you have a pop-up virtual keyboard to enter text, as I do, you don’t need to close the keyboard to send the Tweet, saving two steps (and about two seconds).
Seesmic 1.0 is not perfect. It was a little buggy and crashed a time or two when I first got it, but during the writing of this review, they released an update that seemed to address the glitches, and so far, it’s running quite well.
Currently, there is no support for multiple accounts, nor does it support (#) hashtag searches. There are four tabs on top and the good thing is, large fingers can access them easily (not easy on Twitroid with its tiny tabs). Although I agree four is the right number of tabs, I think they can cut them down in size vertically by about 20% (to save real-estate) and still be perfectly usable. Seesmic chose to have a Profile tab instead of a Compose tab, which needs to be accessed from the menu. I think this should be reversed. I’d also like font size control to be in the next update. Lastly, when you Tweet from this app, it shows your tweet as being from Seesmic. I would prefer they differentiate their mobile app from their desktop client. Something like “SeesmicMobile” or “SeesmicAndroid”.
Wish list aside, Seesmic for Android might be new, but it is already the Twitter app to beat. This is a 1.0 release, and for them to get this much right on the first go is impressive. If you, like me, are in this brave new world of Android, download Seesmic as your Twitter app. It’s currently the best out there, and I have no doubts, it will only get better.
