RIM’s official Twitter app for BlackBerry devices has been rumored to be coming for the last few weeks. It was released into beta yesterday and I’ve been test-driving it for the last 24 hours. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s not very good and here’s why:
• It’s incredibly slow to load and each tab (timeline, @s, DM, etc.) has to be refreshed individually
• There’s no way of knowing which tweets are new and which one’s are old
• The screen size for 99 percent of the BlackBerry devices limits visibility of the latest tweets to one or two
• You’re unable to view profile pics (small gripe)
• Does not support multiple accounts
• Previews for Twitpic/yFrog/etc are not available
• No video support
• There doesn’t appear to be a built-in URL shortener
• No option to pick which photo service to use
And here’s what I liked about it:
• BB shortcuts are enabled
• Photo uploading is painless
Perhaps TweetGenius and Seesmic have spoiled me rotten, but v1.0.0.228 of Twitter for BlackBerry is unimpressive and needs a bit of work before it’s released into the wild. We have one beta code to giveaway. Who wants it?