Twitwars: Seesmic Gives Premium Functionality For Free

Even with Twitter releasing their official app, there is plenty of room for competition amongst the Android third-party Twitter app ranks, and we’ll continue drilling into the selection. Seesmic for Android offers a little bit of something for everyone: speed, functionality, features, and usability all combine to make Seemsic a one-size-fits-all Twitter client for most people’s everyday needs.

From the start, you can feel how clean and professional Seesmic’s interface looks. Red accents meshing with an organizedd tabbed interface makes the app easy to look at. There’s no customization outside of font-size, but its design is minimal and devoid of wild colors and icons to make sure you’re looking at the information you need. While most apps feature a “jump to top” button, Seesmic integrates this function into their app’s red title bar. On a 3.2-inch WVGA screen, it’s a bit difficult to hit the button, but I do have plump fingers and I’m sure I’d have no problems on a bigger screen with a higher resolution.

Seesmic tailors to the professional users, too, with support for multiple accounts. While they are not the first to give us this option, it does seem like a feature that’s exclusive to “Pro” or “Premium” versions of other apps: Seesmic’s dedication to keeping their apps and services free is appreciated beyond belief.

A major milestone was reached with the Seesmic app when they added proxy support. What this means is you’re able to use Seesmic to retrieve updates and post status messages to accounts on other services that uses the same connections that Twitter does to connect. I’ve tried this out with Tumblr.com so far, and it worked flawlessly. You won’t be getting the full Tumblr experience (or the full experience of whatever social network you’re able to connect with using this method) but the developers have shown interest in providing more features specific to each supported protocol over time.

You’re given the usual host of features, as well, including notifications, native and old-style retweets, geotagging, uploading media, URL shrinking, and more. Notifications work well and show you exactly how many new tweets you’ve gotten since the last time you’ve checked. As far as media goes, I did find it took longer to upload a picture with Seesmic than it does with other apps. I’m not sure why this would be, but I’ve tried the same image on other apps and Seesmic takes significantly longer than the rest (on a WiFi connection).

Seesmic also has an internal browser, but it seems you can only use it to view images. It would’ve been nice to see support for opening full web-pages in the internal browser, as well, as they tend to be faster than launching it in the full browser application. You’re given the usual round of options – including being able to set your default account – and there’s also an option to use YouTube as the default video uploading service. Not many apps give you this option yet, and it was a delight to see.

One feature that is overlooked that I appreciate is the ability to individually select “reply to” candidates whenever I respond to a tweet containing multiple mentions. It’s a lifesaver when I want to pick out only a couple of people to reply to in any given tweeet (perhaps if I don’t know some of the other people that were mentioned alongside me). With that, full list support, deep native retweet options, a widget, full search capabilities, and comprehensive profile views wrap up Seesmic’s collection of features that should make this very solid app attractive to anyone looking to settle down with their first Twitter app.

The Pros:

• Clean, elegant interface
• Exceptional performance for features ratio
• Powerful featureset that you might only otherwise find in a paid app
• Innovation usually a treat when we see an update
• Responsive developer for any issues you have

The Cons:

• Not able to use internal browser to view full web pages
• I was not able to find a way to update any of the information in my profile

The Bottom Line:

If you need a no-nonsense app that gives you access to most of Twitter’s crucial functions without having to throw down some pennies, then Seesmic’s going to be your first stop. It’s suitable for use on any device as it finds a great balance between speed, features, and usability to appeal to a large cache of Android’s Twitter users.

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Be sure to check back frequently as we’ll be bringing you more reviews of some of the premier twitter apps that the Android market has to offer. If there’s a review for an app you want to see in particular, let it be known in the comments below! Also, be sure to follow me on Twitter if you haven’t already.

Other posts in the Twitwars series: Twidgit Lite, Twidroid, Twicca, Twitter For Android