Many say that Twidroid is just that, but other people I’ve spoken to (who I agree with) find the application both too slow and the interface design terrible. If it were on the iPhone, it would easily win the competition for the worst-designed interfaces on the App Store.

But, despite its God-awful logo, Seesmic has potential in both these areas – especially since its first update today – and successfully adds some features that others have failed to implement well so far. Three highlights come to mind when thinking of the new Seesmic for Android app:

It’s ridiculously easy to use!

Everything is where you would expect it to be; navigation sits in tabs at the top of the screen, the menu button gives you publishing options and direct messages are threaded so look like IM chats. It’s also very easy on the eye so you don’t have to deal with the eyesore that is Twidroid for a fully-featured Android client (which, like Tweetdeck, makes Twitter a very unpleasant experience for me).

Images for your consumption:

Stay notified

Yeah, I know; nearly every Android Twitter app has notifications. Though native notifications support comes as standard, it’s often not executed well. Luckily Seesmic features a great notifications system which allows you to customise what updates the app looks for, how often it checks for them and how it should present it to you – status bar, flashing LED, vibrations, ringtones.

The level of customisation is great and allows you to filter out simple timeline updates – something which HTC’s Peep doesn’t let you do – and only get notified on @replies and direct messages – or vice versa. This is very similar to how Twidroid handles notifications, but the speed of the app makes accessing updates after notifications much quicker.

It’s speedi(er)

The big negative around Twidroid and HTC’s proprietary Peep applications are both speed. Even though you may set update intervals to every five minutes, whether it actually does so or not is another matter. The applications are both unacceptably unresponsive for accessing a network that can chuck out multiple updates per minute.

Seesmic is not as fast as the lightweight apps like TwitWalk (a.k.a. Twitgee) and iTweet, but it does out-speed its full-featured siblings and is fully recommended if you are a high-power Twitter.

It’s not all rosy though.

Even though Seesmic is probably the best full-featured Twitter client on Android, it doesn’t come without its shortcomings.

Firstly, the applications doesn’t share its APIs with the operating system, so you can’t directly share a photo from your image album via Seesmic. Instead, you need to access Seesmic and upload it within the app. Hardly a deal-breaker, but can be annoying if you take a photo or find a link you want to Tweet quickly.

Secondly, although Seesmic is faster than the other full-featured applications, it’s still pretty slow. It’s terribly slow compared to the likes of Tweetie 2 for iPhone. It’s still frustrating when trying to share something or reply to someone quickly, for this reason I recommend having a second, light-weight Twitter app to do all the quick stuff.

Finally, unlike Seesmic for Windows there is not yet support for Twitter lists. There is no official word from Seesmic whether this will be coming to the Android version, but this addition would be most welcomed for ease of viewing of multiple groups of updates.

So in short – it’s got potential, and with a few updates it could very easily solidify its position as the top Android Twitter app.

UPDATE - It appears that some HTC Hero users are suffering very slow load times for this app. Will update once we work out where the problem lies - Turns out this may be down to HTC Sense UI’s power-hungry widget system. Close as many widgets as possible to speed the whole system up!

HTC has now answered my prayers and has just released an update to its HTC Sync software, which keeps all of your contact information (including photos) consistent across the board.

To download this onto your PC, just visit http://www.htc.com/uk/SupportViewNews.aspx?dl_id=756&news_id=339. Sorry Apple fans – no sign of a version for Mac yet (and I doubt we will see one any time soon).

Lifestyle & Productivity

GPS & Location

Media & Entertainment

Tools & Utility

If anyone has any other great Android App catalogues, please let us know in the comments section below.

“If you enjoy online social interactions, device customisation and great design, you’ll love this phone”

Good for:

• Easily staying in touch with friends via phone, social networks and text
• Sharing multimedia with friends or social networking contacts
• Customisation options (Scenes)
• Minimalist design

The HTC Hero has received many accolades in its short life so far, topping the T3 best gadgets list and leaving Walt Mossberg (NY Times) saying that it is the “best Android phone available.” Widely considered as the first truly credible “iPhone killer,” the phone comes in a number of guises.

European and Asian users can get it in black, white, graphite, brown or pink, while it’s also available from T-Mobile under the name G2 Touch. US users have received a more rounded and slightly old fashioned looking version on the US network, Sprint, but the difference is aesthetic alone. I have been playing around with the white unlocked version using a T-Mobile SIM.

Aesthetics

Easily the most attractive Android handset to date, the HTC Hero features 3.2-inch 320 x 480 pixel screen in a light and relatively small form factor. You can feel the quality of the device in your hand as it strikes the middle ground between bulkiness and flimsiness. The white version that I use is also Teflon coated with an oleophobic screen, designed to reduce greasy finger marks and stains to the minimalist shell.

Probably most striking of all is the angled ‘chin’. Following the lead of the T-Mobile G1, the HTC Hero takes the angular lip at the bottom of the handset and makes it even more pronounced. The angle really helps the ergonomics of the device and feels generally comfortable in the hand.

Interface

Apart from the hardware, the user experience is the main attraction. The Hero is the first handset to feature its new Sense UI which the company claims it’s based on three tenets: “Make it mine,” “Stay close” and “Discover the unexpected.” Unlike many other custom user experiences, it actually works brilliantly.

The phone presents users with seven different ’scenes’, each customisable so that users can focus the phone’s features on what suits them best during work, social life and travelling, for example. All the widgets on offer here are high quality and generally enhance the user experience well. This is all bettered by the excellent screen the device boasts, displaying rich colours and depth that makes the user interface a very immersive experience.

Internet/Multimedia

With HSDPA and Wi-Fi connectivity options, the internet browsing experience is great too, though not as fast as the likes of the iPhone 3GS.

But the phone has a trick up its sleeve to better the iPhone 3GS – Flash support. The device will let you browse most basic flash websites (though the likes of BBC iPlayer and 4OD don’t perform well at all). It’s a nice to have and certainly makes day-to-day browsing a more pleasant experience.

Multi-touch is also supported on the HTC Hero. Users can pull their fingers away from each other to zoom in and pinch to zoom out again. Very nice to have on the phone and makes the internet browsing experience even more intuitive.

Email is impressive on the HTC Hero, supporting IMAP and Exchange email accounts are supported (so you can browse personal and work email on the go). The email program is attractive, intuitive and generally responsive. The opposite can be said for its media player though.

Although HTC has improved the standard Android music player, it falls short of the competition – it feels slow and unresponsive when compared to rival experiences. It feels as though HTC pushed the hardware beyond its limits with its music software, which makes the media player feel particularly ‘broken’.

The camera quality is also quite poor and although it boasts a 5-megapixel camera, its sensor is slow and low in quality. The shutter is also noticeably slow and the camera lacks a flash – with both of these factors combined, you can only really take photos in broad daylight. With these issues aside, the flipping through pictures in a photo album is implemented nicely and sharing of media to other applications and services such as Flickr, Facebook and Twitter is very, very easy.

Phone functions

HTC Hero takes a conversational approach to contacts on the phone. From someone’s contact card, you can check what they have been up to on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or email at a glance.

Phone-wise, I have had great experiences with call quality – probably the best I’ve experienced for a long time. The high-quality is continued when you move over to speaker phone, which, in my view, is second-to-none.

Battery life is OK, but not fantastic. If you are a casual-moderate user, you will probably be able to stretch the phone for a couple of days, although if you’re an avid web/email user you may need to charge it a bit each day.

Verdict

Easily the best Android experience so far. The people-centric approach works brilliantly and interacting with your contacts couldn’t be more enjoyable. The industrial design and user interface give the phone a very distinct style and HTC Sense offers a completely different experience to the top-end smartphone mix. If you enjoy online social interactions, device customisation and great design, you’ll love this phone.

Though a little rough around the edges, the DoubleTwist software allows you to use your iTunes library with an Android phone. In a similar way to iTunes’ drag and drop functionality to transfer media to your iPod/iPhone, DoubleTwist lets you copy specific tracks or playlists from your library to Android’s media folder. What it doesn’t do is automatically synchronise media files between a computer and a phone at the moment.

The software even works with customised Android phones like the HTC Hero; all media transfer seamlessly.

If you’re into paying for your music, DoubleTwist also supports Amazon’s music store; allowing you to purchase whatever track you want through through the software.

DoubleTwist is great with the basics and I believe it is essential for all Android users. However it’s no iTunes yet; lacking a decent in-built media player, album art fetcher, playback of Apple DRM’ed content and podcast downloading features.

But what it excels as is an intermediary between iTunes and your Android phone and knocks spots off anything else currently out there.

Further reading

• DoubleTwist + Amazon MP3 Store = One More Reason to Ditch iTunes [Downloads] (lifehacker.com)
• iTunes competitor doubleTwist gains Amazon MP3 store (macworld.com)
• Sync devices to your iTunes collection (thaibrother.com)

Android phones and the iPhone are often pitted against each other in this arena, but which is best for your average social butterfly?

iPhone

The iPhone has a great variety of social media applications on its App Store and carries networking client heavyweights such as Tweetie 2 and Facebook for iPhone – both of which are far beyond anything found on any of the other platforms in terms of functionality and general polish.

Tweetie 2 is a near-unbeatable client for Twitter, with better integration with your account than anything you can find on your desktop computer even. For an iPhone app, it’s even good at sharing data with other applications – so you can send links, tweets or images to selected services pretty well. This is probably the application I miss most since moving over to Android.

Facebook for iPhone also comes out on top compared to its Android sibling. You can manage groups, upload video and keep on top of your social calendar with ease.

But iPhone has its shortcomings. Even though the likes of Tweetie 2 have the ability to communicate with selected applications, they cannot plug into the overall mobile experience like Android counterparts can.

Another key stumbling block is that the iPhone can only run one application at a time – making it pretty hard to keep track of multiple networks at a time.

Android

In short, the Twitter and Facebook applications for Android tend to lack the overall polish that their iPhone counterparts have.

For example, Twidroid, the Android application to beat, still pales in comparison to Tweetie 2 -both in features and user interface. The Facebook ‘app’ is a mere portal to the network’s mobile website.

But where Android’s social networking capabilities shine is constant connectivity.

Say you want to keep on top of your IMs while you browse Facebook or Twitter – Android’s multiple app support coupled with its excellent notification system make this a pleasant experience.

Also, you may notice that the actual phone manufacturers customise the phones themselves to allow you to access Facebook from your contacts list, for example. There have been some great attempts at this – some really show the platform’s social potential. Check out HTC and Moto’s shots at this.

Conclusion

For the moment I would recommend the iPhone for the casual social networker – with solid Twitter and Facebook applications it is hard to beat.

But for a regular communicator connected to multiple networks at once, I strongly recommend picking up a HTC Hero or Moto Cliq/Dext. Both have solid manufacturer-made networking capabilities built into the phone’s core and take full advantage of Android’s flexibility. The future certainly looks bright for Android – let’s just hope developers invest enough time into it!

Disclaimer – Motorola is a client of the company I work for.

Thanks to nrkbeta for the title image.

Just run a search for the popular OpenHome Android theme programme – locating the actual application among the individual themes is a gargantuan task in itself.

Jacob Paulsen from Android Meets Social Media wrote a great post on a service called MyMarket.cc which aims to simplify the process of getting quality apps to the top of the pile.

The service allows you to do the following:

• Keyword filter for title & developer
• Description and comments preview
• Bookmark, recommend and remove items
• View recommendations based on user votes
• Basic search function
• My Downloads with Updates
• US and EU market results

For more info, head on over to Android Meets Social Media. See below for screenshots.

Thanks to ModenaDude for the title image.

• Android Guys - http://androidguys.com/
• Androinica - http://androinica.com/
• Google Mobile - http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/
• Google AndBlog - http://www.googleandblog.com/
• Hello Android - http://www.helloandroid.com/
• I.M. Droid - http://imandroid.org/
• Phandroid - http://phandroid.com/
• Planet Android - http://www.planetandroid.com/
• Talk Android - http://www.talkandroid.com/
• Android Developers - http://android-developers.blogspot.com

Any more suggestions – please let me know (and we can turn this into a top 50)!

Image credit: Information Architects

Formerly being such an advocate of all things Apple (and therefore the iPhone), many people have asked what on Earth has possessed me to switch to Android after building a vast collection of paid-for applications on iTunes. The answer is simple.

Usability

The iPhone is widely praised for its brilliant usability, offering a very simple approach to accessing applications and services through the familiar “home screen.”

It’s great, though I have heard those who are less tech-savvy question why it is not possible to access Facebook friends (for example) through the contacts list, or be able to send a photo directly from a gallery to a Twitter feed. These questions are interesting, especially since those more techy of us can instinctively create a workaround and not notice these as problems.

On picking up another more open smartphone – such as Android, for example – both techies and newbies alike appear to appreciate how everything fits together a lot more than when greeted with the obstructions the iPhone platform creates. Yes, you can send a photo from your photos gallery to Twitter and, yes, you can access Facebook contacts though your phone’s contact list.

Frustratingly, how this works is largely in the hands of handset manufacturers and mobile operators – some do it brilliantly (like HTC with the Hero)  others may not (Vodafone and the HTC Magic – 500MB download limit?!). Although Android marketplace simplifies installing add-ons and customisations, it is often difficult for the average consumer to find and install them.

This blog aims to provide a helping hand to users to easily make their Android phone their own and give practical Android news, tips and tricks to create the ultimate mobile experience.

I’m a relatively new user, so this is as much a learning experience as anything else – feel free to email me thoughts and suggestions to teach me more!