Having recently left my desk job behind, I have moved to a “mobile office” with my Blackberry© Curve. I’m using Google Sync to keep my calendar and contacts in sync, the Gmail Mobile app, and of course I have the Facebook and MySpace apps for Blackberry as well.
Those all seem to work fairly well, so you would think getting Twitter on my Blackberry would be a piece of cake, right? Unfortunately, it is proving to be more troublesome than I expected. Why? Because all of the solutions I’ve tried so far have sorely lacked the collection of features I would like in a decent Blackberry application.
What follows is a summary of the methods & apps I’ve used, and what they possess (or lack) in terms of desirable features:
Twitter Device Updates
This is practically the “default” method of getting tweets on your phone, and the only way if you don’t have a smart phone but do have text messaging capabilities. Granted you probably want an unlimited SMS plan on your phone, but you will get tweets from your friends faster this way than any other. If you don’t intend to actually interact with those you follow, this is probably your best bet… unless you follow more than a few people, then you will be bombarded with tweets, especially during peak tweeting hours. Lame. If you do interact like most of us do, there is no quick or easy way to reply, direct message, retweet, or open Twitter profiles from a text message. More lame.
Twitterberry
A standard, it seems, for Twitter users with Blackberries. I liked the speed over Twibble (below), as well as the ability to set notifications for replies, direct messages and your friends timeline separately. You can reply, retweet, direct message, add a favorite and more on each tweet, view your direct messages or replies only.
The biggest drawback to Twitterberry – and this is a biggie – is that you must have the app open for it to run. That is, it actually closes when you hit the escape key. There is no background process to keep the tweets coming and notify you of the new ones. What the hell? A Blackberry app that doesn’t have a background process? Really lame.
Twibble
This app is a sleek, attractive alternative to Twitterberry. My first installation a week ago worked pretty good, except for the fact that leaving it running seemed to slow performance over time. It also would not notify me of new tweets, let alone when I got a reply or a direct message. The update on April 27th (version 0.8, I believe) would not even retrieve my Twitter friends feed no matter how long I let it run. Nothing in their FAQ would really address this issue so I was forced to uninstall it. Super lame.
Other choices?
I just installed TinyTwitter but have not had ample opportunity to play with it for an honest review. So far, it annoyed me with a “Do you want to follow TinyTwitter for news and updates?” nag screen until I told it yes, and when I checked my profiles I did not see anyway to get tweet notifications. Pity. I was looking forward to this one fullfilling my every mobile Twittering need.
What else is out there? Let me know in the comments, please.
Tags: Blackberry, Gmail, Twitter
