Twitter for Blackberry: an Uber Disappointment

So yesterday I tried out the new Blackberry Twitter app. I've been an Ubertwitter user for over a year now, but I was eagerly anticipating what Blackberry had to bring to the table.  After all, it's their app designed for their phone, and who knows you better than yourself right? WRONG.  I used it for 5 minutes and switched back to Ubertwitter (actually never stopped using Ubertwitter, but rather parked the Blackberry Twitter app right next to it).  And here's why:

 

1)  No visual distinction in the timeline for DMs and @ replies.

 

Even though I love to read, I'm very much an "at a glance" type of girl.  I want information assimilated into my brain as quickly as possible, which is why I love the fact that Ubertwitter makes @ replies yellow and DMs green within my timeline.  As I'm skimming through new tweets, these catch my eye.  The Blackberry Twitter app (hereinafter referred to as BBT) makes no color distinction.  Sure, you can go to the menu and just go to your @ replies and DMs, but Ubertwitter gives you that option as well.  Slightly related to this is the fact that I love the prominent "In Reply To" button on Ubertwitter so I can follow a conversation all the way back.  Yes, BBT does this, but it's not as convenient.

 

2) Refresh > every 5 minutes.

 

Blackberry are you serious??  Do you know how many tweets an average Twitter user can amass in 5 minutes??  I don't either, but I know it's a lot.  I'd be scrolling forever to get caught up every time it would do a refresh.  Ubertwitter gives you the option to refresh as often as every 1 minute.  Sure it's more pull on the battery to refresh that often, but battery management is MY decision to make.  And that's what chargers and USB cables are for. BBT makes you wait an eternity to see your new tweets, leaving many Tweeps deprived and frustrated.

 

3) No editing for retweets.

 

Someone obviously didn't do their market research to realize that this feature from the Twitter website is loathed by just about every Twitter user on the planet.  It is as if nobody wants to admit that they screwed the pooch on this one and keep forcing it upon us to make us like it (dammit!). For one, I like to be able to add my own comments to RTs so I'm contributing to the dialogue, not just parroting someone else.  For two, I don't like these random strangers' names and faces showing up in my timeline when one of my friends retweets them. I want the person who retweeted's name and pic to show up, and THEN if I want to go to the original poster's profile & timeline, I can.  I'm all about choices, if you haven't figured that out by now.

 

4) No autofill of friends' names.

 

It's really pointless to do an @ reply when you misspell a person's name, because they won't see it anyway.  Ubertwitter solved the problem of trying to remember the spelling of people's names by automatically filling in names as you type.  Once you type the @ symbol, a list of all your friends pops up and gets sorted as you type out the name.  You can also scroll down the entire list and choose a name.  This really comes in handy when you're like me and have the memory of a goldfish and can't remember how a person's name is spelled, or if you want to @ reply multiple people or when you are drunk Tweeting.  In BBT, like the web, you either have to cut and paste (which doesn't work for multiple Tweeps on your Blackberry) or try to remember exactly how everyone's name is spelled.  That's just too much work.

 

5) Limited viewing options.

 

One size does not fit all, but BBT seems to think so. There is no option to make text size smaller to fit more tweets on the screen.  At most in BBT I could see 1 or 2 tweets, when in Ubertwitter I can fit around 4 for average length tweets.  Doesn't seem like a big difference, but it IS.  Ubertwitter also allows you to have different text sizes for timelines versus tweets, so your timeline can be smaller for skimming, while tweets can be larger for reading and composing.  BBT also gives you one line in which to composed tweets, as opposed to Ubertwitter providing an entire window so you can see your whole message as you compose it.  Call me a nerd, but there's a certain aesthetic quality to the arrangement of words and characters in Tweets that you just can't see in that little one line.

 

My verdict: the Blackberry Twitter app bites.  If you like the fabulously sucky features of the Twitter website, then maybe you'll like it.  If you're expecting Blackberry's app to do anything extra that Ubertwitter doesn't besides further clutter up your primary message list (which you can basically do anyway by enabling the "text on new tweets" option on the website, and then what's the point of having an app in the first place??) you'll be sorely disappointed.  Ubertwitter already does a great job of being fully integrated into Blackberry's features..... I've sent things to Ubertwitter that would take me forever and 5 steps to do online like sending pictures, music AND video.  I can take a picture either before or after I start composing a tweet, as it's fully integrated into not just media, but the camera function itself.  If you want visual notifications, it's hooked into that and can be customized from Blackberry's options screen.  It seems like Blackberry let Twitter design this app, and everyone knows that everyone else does Twitter better than they do.

 

Blackberry (and Twitter) you need to take some notes from Ubertwitter.  In fact you should have just done your product development like the Burger King did coming up with BK's sausage muffin sandwich and just copied the whole concept lock, stock and barrel.  Blackberry, I love you and we can still be friends, but you really missed the mark on this one.

Everything Ain't for Everybody

"You know what they say..... everything ain't for everybody.... but I tried anyway......"

I have been a Blackberry user since 2007.  I remember when I first got my Blackberry Curve I got teased by one of my friends because he said my phone was so "corporate".  I couldn't get the iPhone I wanted (and the reason I switched carriers in the first place) because it wouldn't work with my firm's enterprise server, so I was stuck with a Blackberry or a Treo (been there, done that). At first I resented the little bastard..... I wasn't "corporate", dammit!! (even though I was working as an associate at the largest law firm in the city at the time)  I wanted a sexy phone, too!  But ultimately it became an issue of utility over form and I dealt with it.

Since my first Curve 8300, I've had a Curve 8350 (well, the guts of it anyway, after my friend spilled a pint of Blue Moon on my 8300 and another friend gave me his 8350 with a cracked case, so I got out my little screwdriver set and swapped out the body.... easy stuff), a Bold 9000 (which I LOVED), and now a Tour 9630.  I don't know if someone was smoking crack while the designed the Tour or whether I just have really, really bad luck with phones, but I am now on my 4th replacement Tour (so 5th phone total).  If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting the same result, then apparently I am stark raving mad.  But this past weekend made one thing abundantly clear to me: I'm just a Crackberry fiend lover.

So, my 3rd replacement Tour, as all the others before it, started effing up.  Freezing up, screen delay when turned on, trackball lags, just acting a plumb donkey.  Sprint (bless their souls) is very good about replacing phones on warranty versus making you use your insurance, and their policy is that on your third replacement you get to switch to a different model. Unfortunately, the Tour is currently their best Blackberry, and the Tour 2 won't be out for months, so on my 3rd replacement I decided to forgo that option.  However, on this 4th time I was just fed up.  I lucked up and got Ben the Assistant Manager this go around and he offered to let me pick any phone I wanted. *cue hallelujah chorus*

Let me back up.  My beau prides himself on his ability to get things for free.  And one of the things he's been able to get has been not one, but TWO phone upgrades at no cost.  His latest and greatest triumph came in the form of the HTC Touch Pro 2, currently Sprint's most expensive smartphone with a retail price of about $600.  And it does everything.... walks your dog, tells you how great you look, signals alien space crafts, all the bells and whistles.  We would have races to see who could look up some random bit of information faster between his HTC and my Blackberry, and yes, he would usually win.  He would always mockingly (but jokingly) point out some cool feature that his phone could do that mine couldn't.  It was sleeker, sexier......and not corporate.

Back to Saturday and Ben the Assistant Manager.  So I wouldn't come off as trying to get over on anyone (which I wasn't) I feigned ignorance and acted like I was just *so* put out by the fact that they couldn't offer me another Blackberry and asked him what my options were, when in my mind I knew exactly which damn phone I wanted: that Touch Pro 2, so finally, FINALLY, I could shake my smartphone inferiority complex.  I pretended to browse down the row of display phones before finally saying to Ben the Assistant Manager, "Well I GUESS I'll try out that one."   And of course the first message I sent was to my beau with the "neener, neener, neener, lookie what I got!" text.  Victory in the form of a sexy phone was finally mine.

But then I got home.  Actually first I was trying to play with it in the car (kids, don't try this at home) and damn near wrecked a few times because I couldn't manage to work the touch screen right and the keyboard is so long it can't be used one handed.  Ok, I told myself, I just have to get used to it, set it up, customize it.  I started doing the set up and customizing my settings, and slowly began to realize that while it did all these great fancy things, it didn't do what I needed it to do.  No push (i.e. real time) e-mail, no custom notifications (I couldn't use my Perry the Platypus sound for texts (!!), or vary the vibration types), no Google Talk application, no Pandora app (?!!!?!!!), and no Twitter application that seamlessly integrated the camera and media on my phone.... really no Twitter app at all.  Navigating through the phone wasn't as easy as it was on my Blackberry, and admittedly when it comes to my phone usage I'm an OCD ADD user.  I need everything I need, right there, easily accessible, functional, and admittedly..... basic. 

Then there was the issue of it just being wrong.  The weight of it felt wrong, the keyboard slide out and two hand usage felt wrong, and it just looked wrong in my possession.  I'd glance over at it sitting on the table and think "That's not my phone, that's HIS phone."  I had already mentally associated it with my beau, and it was his identity, not mine.  It worked for him and the way he used his phone, which I now appreciate is very different from the ways in which I use mine.  I realized that while it is a great phone, it was no better than my mildly attractive "corporate" Blackberry.... just different.

So despite his insistence that I just had to get used to it, the next day I took it back and asked for another Tour, this time brand new out the box instead of another refurbished replacement.  I'm hoping that makes a difference because I have a feeling that the problems I was having were common to all these refurb Tours and I was simply getting someone else's recycled crap.  And if not, and it's truly a piece of crap, I'll just keep swapping it out until the Tour 2 gets released and get my hand on one of those.  I've just accepted that this is a small price to pay (or not pay, thanks to Sprint) for what I'm comfortable with and satisfies my needs.

Of course there's a bigger life lesson here, which was so aptly summarized by Jilly from Philly at the beginning of this post.  It doesn't matter how great someone else tells you that something is, or what you should want, or how great something works for them.  In the end it's about YOUR needs and the life choices you make to meet those needs.  Too many people go through life seeking what they should want-- in a career, a mate, a lifestyle--not what they actually want, only to be sorely disappointed when they wasted their time on someone else's ideal.  It's not that you were misled or that the other choice is inferior.... it may just wrong for you.