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Twitter is great on smartphones, but awful on Windows Phone 7
Twitter on Windows Phone 7 may look good, but don't be fooled
Having a smartphone means that you can use social-networking sites on the go, and Twitter is a particulalrly successful example of this.
With that in mind, the official Twitter application for Windows Phone 7 (WP7) is a real stinker. While we've had grumblings about the Twitter app for Android phones (occasional bugs, prone to crashing), its WP7 cousin is a total botch job.
It looks promising to begin with; a clear, white and blue interface with an elegant and simplistic font. Swiping right will move from timeline to mentions, to messages, to lists and then back to timeline. At the bottom of the screen are buttons for refreshing the page, posting to Twitter (or 'Tweeting'), sending a direct message or searching for a trending topic or term.
That's where the good news ends. The idea of Twitter is that it is meant to be immediate but the WP7 app doesn't seem to grasp this. The app didn't remember our position on the timeline when we were reading posts, so refreshing took us back to a seemingly random post. This was irritating when trying to follow an unfolding news story or sporting event.
Buttons and other functions also don't work. The 'follow' button regularly did nothing at all, while some profiles failed to load when we tapped on them. When sending messages to people we followed the app didn't autocomplete the name, so we had to remember the exact Twitter handle (@Computeractive for example) if we wanted to send a message. The same is true for direct messages.
Searching also seemed broken and even when we knew our internet connection was good, Twitter failed to load searches or update with new posts.
Recent reader reviews sum up our feelings towards the app quite well: crashes, functions don't work, doesn't update properly, poor search and much more besides.
For those reasons and many more, Twitter on Windows Phone 7 is very poor.
Read more reviews
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Posted by dajunga, 14 Feb 2012
Other twitter options
Both Seesmic and Tweetcaster work much better for WP7. Just go with one of those instead
Posted by Scarlett, 14 Feb 2012
How does it compare to the native WP7 Twitter functionality?
So how does this Twitter for WP7 compare to the native built-in Twitter functionality of WP7? Not being a Twitter user, I'm just curious more than anything.
Posted by WP7, 14 Feb 2012
Twitter App on WP7
Well the Twitter APP may stink, however, as Twitter is part of the Windows Phone 7 OS natively (i.e., you don't need the app to tweet), a majority of WP7 users don't actually use the app, and instead use the People Hub.
Posted by Vinny, 15 Feb 2012
Response to Vinny & WP7
WP7 - the native in-built Twitter functionality is better, but still a bit sub-par. So, for example, the 'big' name for people is their real name, while their Twitter handle is below the post in smaller font. The lack of profile pictures if also a shame, looks quite dull as a consequence. There's also no clearly and quickly available button to post updates, which is a bit backwards.
Posted by James - Computeractive, 15 Feb 2012