UberTwitter review

Simon Bisson

We review UberTwitter, a Twitter client for your BlackBerry

Published on Jul 13, 2009

Finding the ideal BlackBerry Twitter client isn’t easy. There are a lot of them, and they all work in subtly different ways. One problem they all try to deal with is BlackBerry’s small screen real estate (even on Bold and Storm).

Some show the whole message on screen, others give you expanding views. One of the best approaches is UberTwitter, with a smoothly scrolling view of your friends’ timeline.

UberTwitter has everything you expect from a Twitter client, with separate views for @replies and direct messages (though you can integrate them with the timeline view).

One option reduces the size of profile icons, letting you have more text on the screen at once – worth doing even on large screen devices like the Bold and the Storm. Search is important, and there’s quick access to Twitter search, as well as a list of the current trending topics and hashtags.

You can even use UberTwitter to set your Google Talk status, automatically updating every time you send a fresh tweet. There’s also support for geolocation, using either built-in GPS or cell tower triangulation. You’ll probably want to use the latter, as it’ll keep battery usage to a minimum, even if it isn’t as accurate.

You can automatically add your location to every tweet, or choose to add it if you want – as well as updating your profile’s location field. One useful feature lets you see what people near you are saying – so you can find out just what’s going on in your neighbourhood.

It can be a little awkward going through the set up wizard every time you want to change a setting, but it’s certainly clear and easy to use. Each page has good, clear, descriptive text, with well-defined options. The BlackBerry OS lets you run applications in the background, so you can close UberTwitter, but still collect messages. You’ll get notifications of new direct messages, so you can quickly see what messages you’ve been sent.

Twitter is a website that needs a good client, and UberTwitter is one of the best, with most of the features you’ll find in desktop clients like Twhirl and Tweetdeck. It’s also free – just download it on to your phone and start tweeting.