Twitter for BlackBerry Gets Previewed

Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion is working on a new application for the users of a BlackBerry smartphone, namely a Twitter client. For the time being, the work is in some of its early stages, and only a beta flavor of the software solution is available, but it seems that some lucky enough already had the chance to take a look at Twitter for BlackBerry, and came up with their impressions on the application.

According to the guys over at BGR, who managed to get the application for a pre-release review, there is not that much of a breakthrough solution as originally expected. The main issue seems to be the fact that there are a lot of functionalities packed in it, and the small display of a smartphone seems cluttered with what the solution has to offer. But there's more, yet one should remember that this is only an early beta version of Twitter for BlackBerry.

Here's what BGR also notes:
- There are no keyboard shortcuts we can find except for “R” for reply, “C” for direct message (umm…) and “L” for all. Okay, fine. There’s also “T” for top and “B” for bottom.
- Tweets are not cached, meaning each time you open up the app you have to sit tight while your timeline is populated.
- Loading tweets is slow in terms of the app itself lagging and the pulling of data. Running the app with Wi-Fi honestly offers no advantage over 3G.
- You can search for people, keywords (and narrow them down by location), view trending topics
- Have we mentioned this app is laggy?
- You can compose tweets and DMs from the standard Messages app, but it’s actually a bit [annoying] because you have to hit Menu, scroll down and select Twitter and then pick either Direct Message or Tweet.

At the same time, they also note that the application seems to be randomly locking the device for about 5 to 10 seconds at a time. However, as you can see from their brief presentation of the findings, there are still some things that make the app usable, and future development might fix the great amount of problems the solution currently sports. Take a look at some of the screenshots BGR provided with the app, or head over to their website for more.