UberTwitter and Seesmic Blackberry betas: First impressions

by Will on December 15, 2009 · View Comments

in Blackberry,Mobile,Twitter

Two big releases recently in the world of Blackberry Twitter clients. UberTwitter has its Beta 6 out, and Seesmic updated its Blackberry Twitter app to work with OS4.5, giving me the chance to try it.

Here are very quick impressions:

1. UberTwitter. The new interface is looking very sharp indeed. It puts Tweets in a “bubble” format that makes them very easy to separate visually. Also new is a tab function (e.g., tabs for replies/mentions, home, etc.), which may become more useful when it’s fully implemented. So far, I’ve been unsuccessful in adding anything to it, for instance. Despite the UI improvements, speed seems even better than in previous releases. In several days of normal use, I haven’t seen any instability issues.

The big news, though, is lists. Lists are simple to access and work much as one would expect. In what for me is a killer feature, you can even add people to lists from the Blackberry client.

No one is going to mistake this for an iPhone app yet, but this beta is a quantum leap for Blackberry Twitter apps. Very nice.

One postscript: I’ve since realized that, with lists, UberTwitter will allow you only the first “batch” from the list. As a result, you can only see the most recent 20 posts or whatever. That diminishes its handiness somewhat, but when the “load more” button is fixed, this shouldn’t be an issue.

2. Seesmic beta. I love Seesmic’s desktop client–by far the best, IMO, and its web interface is rapidly becoming nearly as functional. Seesmic focuses on features and simplicity–a potent combination. The Blackberry app appears to continue that trend, with an almost minimalist interface. The upside is that activities like scrolling seem to zoom.

Seesmic also offers lists in an easy-to-use format, albeit with slightly fewer features. At first glance, for instance, one cannot add someone to a list from the app.

The app seems stable, but the edges seem a little rough. It doesn’t always accurately reflect whether I’m following someone, for example, and sometimes timelines never seem to renew, even manually.

All in all, it’s too soon for me to really evaluate Seesmic, since this is the first day it has really been available to me, but for now, I probably won’t be switching from UberTwitter. Seesmic may pull ahead before long when it comes to speed, but UberTwitter currently clobbers other BB clients, and this release has only improved it.

UPDATES: Despite an update to UberTwitter that improves a number of features, the program still does not allow one to see “more” of a list (that is, beyond the initial number called up). For me, that’s a serious issue, since I use lists extensively and almost any list you create will have more than 100 posts since your previous refresh. The button is there, so presumably it will be fixed, but it hasn’t yet. Combined with its sometimes slow speed, I still find myself often using Dabr, a handy, quick and flexible online service.

The newest update of Seesmic, on the other hand, promises some great new features, but I unfortunately wouldn’t know since the program now causes a Java error and won’t launch on my 8330. I have heard from others that it’s an improvement, though (e.g., image previews).

I’ve been using Twittelator on the iPod Touch, though, and am reminded of how far ahead iPhone OS Twitter clients are. For now, UberTwitter remains my favorite native client for BlackBerry.

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