Twitter’s New Android Client

One the major gripes that many Android users had was the lack of apps that are on-parr with the iPhone. Sure, the total number of apps is increasing, but for the most part, in our opinion, they’re nowhere near as good. One area this was previously evident was with Twitter clients. While the iPhone has a number of great ones (led by Tweetie, which Twitter just bought), Android’s options are pretty weak. Seesmic was one of the better options but just wouldn’t be up in the top 5 on the iPhone. Today Twitter may have just solved this problem.

The service has just launched it’s own Android client. We found out they were working on it just a few weeks ago when CEO Evan Williams made the announcement at the company’s Chirp conference. Now, just over two weeks later, it’s here. The company just announced the client on its bog. It wasn’t exactly clear how they would make it when they had previously mentioned it, (whether it was via partnership or all internally) but now it appears that just as with the BlackBerry client, Twitter’s team of developers and designers worked closely with the Android team over at Google to get their client out. But they also noted that they’re hiring an Android engineer, so you can expect that person to be in charge in the future.

Twitter for Android allows for easy sharing any link or photo, through the use of a share button in your favorite application and choose Twitter. You can also read tweets easily in several places on your phone, quickly access your timeline with the home screen widget, view a tweet location on a map, and even see your friend’s latest tweet in your phonebook, GoogleTalk list, or any application that uses Android’s QuickContact bar.

It clearly looks as if thanks to Android’s more open nature, the Twitter client obviously can be deeply integrated into your Phone. An example would be the seamless way to sync the contacts on your Android phone, for Twitter addicts, this level of integration is very nice and “This is just the beginning,” is what the Twitter notes mentioned.

A word of warning, this client is apparently only for Android phones running version 2.1 and above of the software. Older Android phones are stuck with using the standard mobile site.

[gallery]