On February 10th, we were hit with the 2.0 version of the official Twitter client. I’ve always liked the official client, its clean U.I and its simplicty so hard to come-by from the other competitors.

While the 1st version did the job for the average user, we, the hardcore users were left in the dark. I had some issues: lots of bugs, only one account supported, no “Reply to All” option when more than one user was mentioned in a tweet just to name a few. Also, at the time I was using Seesmic for Android, which provides a robust Twitter client (see a VS here), really clean and simple while packed with features. After trying the official version for a week or so, I settled for Seesmic – many features compared to the official version, just like I thought in the beginning.

So what does 2.0 brings? Lots of bug fixes (and introducing lots of others like inability to refresh automatically), @username auto-complete, threaded messages, improved searches, multi-account support, redesigned screens and my favorite “Reply To All” feature added.

So is it better? Yes, it is! A lot better! Yes! Would it be usable for a heavy-user? One requesting as many features as possible in the palm of his/her hands? Yes, it would. This version brings the desktop features in a cleaner, simpler form to your smartphone. Another nice thing is that the app is integrated in the OS, which means your system won’t be under strain when running it in the background. We all know how fast a battery can be depleted by a poorly implemented/designed app.

But I’m a step further now. So I won’t be using the 2.0 Twitter for Android version. And not because there is a better Twitter app  out there. But because Tweetcaster has a nifty feature TFA doesn’t: filters. This app has a Pro version I actually use. While this app is not up to par with TWA or Seesmic for Android in terms of U.I, it sports the same many features and works as fast as those aforementioned.

I’ll write soon about Tweetcaster Pro because it’s one helluva Twitter app!

As I expected, the BlackBerry Twitter application by RIM went officially on Beta! Which means waiting will be over soon. I will continue to use the leaked version (the same built after all) but I will sign-up for the Beta Zone – this is where you can get the Twitter application if you’re not lucky enough to be in a country using the BlackBerry App World.

As of Thursday, I used the new Twitter application by R.I.M. For 2 days I had the occasion of  using every bit of it and make an idea regarding this early version.

Let’s not forget that since being announced by the early adopters lucky enough to be provided with a copy ( by R.I.M, by Crackberry and other sites/developers  hand-picked by R.I.M) lots and lots of tweets and blog articles have popped-up over the Internet driving the people in search of a leak which appeared promptly. Of course, you can never tell if this was done on purpose by R.I.M in order to get as much feedback as possible, or that the BlackBerry community is really, really powerful and we’re benefiting from that.

I downloaded this leak and except for the fact that it will expire on March 31st, it’s THE Beta used by everyone. So, what are the PROs and CONs of THIS build ( it’s important to highlight this as many, many users are disappointed and complaining about quality, U.I, bugs, lags, etc):

PROS:

• its very existence; R.I.M is committed to offer best quality applications to their customers and is not relying solely on its developers.
• the application is built in order to offer as much functionality as possible, that’s why at this moment it does seem a bit overloaded with features
• the notification system is great, allowing one to close the application once it’s done with it. You can launch it, read the tweets by going to your time-line, replies, DMs, profile & search functions and then close it down. It will notify you with a little “t” in the notification bar on the home-screen and integrate the messages in the BlackBerry Messages Application.
• upon opening the DMs, they will be marked with a little check, so you won’t have to comeback to them again.
• the ability to send links from the BlackBerry browser to Twitter in one click AND the fact that this function is integrated with the browser menu options.
• upon choosing automatic refresh, when in foreground the application won’t just unload the new tweets into the time-line causing the fast auto-scrolling of previous tweets, but producing a small notification bar on top of the tweet one’s just reading and announces “new tweets available”.
• after running it for two days I didn’t observe and RAM or battery leaks.
• scrolling 20 tweets is fast and the loading time for the new ones (on WiFi and 3G) is 3 to 4 seconds; it’s OK.
• being a native app, one can change font/size by going to Options/Screen-Keyboard.
• sports  a “conversation” feature allowing you to see your exchange of replies with someone else.
• includes the native shortcuts we’re all used to : “T” for “top”, “B” for “bottom”, “R” for “replies”. There are some more waiting to be discovered.

CONS:

• buggy, no caching so every time you go from one tab to the other it’ll lose time and data reloading everything
• upon exiting the application or even put it in the background, it will slow down the system causing unresponsiveness for more than 15 seconds at times.
• the Retweet function won’t work. There is a workaround by going to “Send To”, choosing “Twitter”, then “Tweet” and then finally editing and sending the tweet. Tiresome.
• OR if it’s true what some users are saying, the RT function does work but you can’t see your own RT (as in the official RT version), while others do. By logging in  your web account, you can find your RTed tweet. So is this a feature?
• no separate notifications for Replies and DMs as we were spoiled by all the others developers of BlackBerry Twitter applications.
• this trial will end March, 31st. I inquired by sending a public reply to @BlackBerry and I got a DM saying they can’t comment on how or why is going to end, but that I should definitely watch them. It’s probably going to be another build and we’ll get to be Beta-testers again? We’ll see.
• lack of push notification. I guess in this kind of application push is not feasible having lots and lots of updates to pull.
• OR when closing the application it will start pushing the new tweets. It might also run in the background and not able to see it – there are some application behaving like this.
• support for tweeting a picture from the Media Gallery would be nice.

Piece of advice: to disable the Twitter application, go to its menu and log off! Yes, a lot of people don’t know how to do it!

Ever since I switched from Symbian to Blackberry, there was one thing I appreciated that RIM does: they work on giving customers the best applications to run. I mean basic applications. They did Yahoo Messenger, AOL, ICQ, the native BBM (BlackBerry Messenger), Windows Live, GTalk, Flickr, My Space and Facebook to name a few. Which means you get push messages and we all know what this means: time and battery saved, low data consumption and no memory leakage.

And know Twitter! We’ve been hoping to get this for quite sometime, but know it’s kinda “official”: the Twitter application done by RIM will be available soon! Of course, the road will be rocky: we’ll have bugs, bugs reports and some updates. But they did it. And that’s my point: here’s a company with millions and millions of customers and these customers get to say their bit. The clients were asking for something and RIM delivers. Unlike so many other giants interested in keeping you at bay and cashing your checks.

I also see Boy Genius Report is writting about it!

PS: More resources are available at BlackBerry Blogs and CrackBerry .

PPS: It’s gonna take some time, the application will be launched towards the end of the year. That’s a long, long time.

Now I know Twitter’s definitely good at something else than wasting one’s time! Lasemaxx!Ate you oatmeal for tonight boys and gals?