Falcon Pro Twitter app comes back to Google Play with Material Design, but it’s not a happy homecoming yet

• Quentyn Kennemer
• 10 years ago

Falcon Pro, the insanely beautiful and functional Twitter client that has been much maligned for Twitter token limit issues in the past, has finally made its return to Google Play. This is version 3, and it focuses on one big element: design. Material Design, to be exact.

The app was beautifully crafted by rockstar developer Joaquim Verges to fit in with Google’s new vision for application design on Android and across the web. Falcon Pro is chock full of the familiar stuff — hamburger sliders, a healthy helping of white space and more all make for an application that look and feel the best an app could on Android right now.

But it’s not all that it seems. The app’s early hours on Google Play netted a 3 and a half star rating, unusual considering Verges usually draws a chorus of applause and praise with what he does. Diving deeper into the app reveals that it’s thin in one big area: features. There is no support for direct messages. There is no way to reply all to a Tweet. There isn’t even a settings menu.

The original crop of Falcon Pro apps were praised as much for their flexibility and deep feature sets as they were for design, but that hasn’t translated in this new rendition. It’s sad, really, because if it had even half the guts of its older counterparts it would probably shoot to the top of the list as the best Twitter client out right now.

Alas, it doesn’t, and that’s why folks aren’t particularly willing to shower the Google Play listing‘s ratings section with a heap of praise and 5-star reviews. It’s natural for them to feel this way considering the comprehensive experience they’ve come to know and love, but the developer says this app is being built from a completely new code base, and if you know anything about development you know that isn’t easy.

The app is free to try, albeit in a very limited way (you get access to select public Twitter lists, but that’s it) so give it a go. If you’ve read this and decide you want to get in on the ride early you can unlock full access for $3.99 for the first account you use, and you can also opt to pay $1.99 for each account after that.

The developer says it was done this way to limit an influx of people authorizing multiple accounts and using up the 100,000 tokens he’s afforded. All the better to make sure as many different people as possible have a chance to use the app, we’d say.

So it’s not all sunshine and roses, but if we know anything about Joaquim Verges it’s that he works fast and relentlessly, and we’re sure it won’t be long before the app is loaded up with all the features we’ve come to know and love.