It's five dollars. It has half the functionality of Twittelator Pro. But Birdfeed just became my default iPhone Twitter app.
It's fast. The fastest Twitter app I've seen since Twitterfon (which isn't that fast anymore, once it started inserting ads.) The user interface is even cleaner and more spare than Tweetie's—the app it will inevitably be compared to the most. For instance, the "load more" button at the bottom is gone—you just keep scrolling down, and it keeps loading new tweets.
Gone, even, is the ubiquitous row of buttons that line the bottom of most Twitter apps for one-touch access to mentions, direct messages and other features. You have to slide back to a list-style menu to reach any feature besides the one you're currently looking at, meaning it's at least two taps to get from a timeline to mentions or vice versa. It solves this problem in part by making it so that you only have to do that when there's a reason to—a number pops up in the back button whenever you have new mentions or DMs telling you many are waiting (pointedly, it badges only new mentions and DMs, not new tweets in your overall timeline). The problem is when you use multiple Twitter clients, since you'll have to look at the same mention twice to get rid of the badge.
Like most every Twitter app except Tweetie, it does cache tweets on your phone, so you can read them offline. Caching is also part of the reason it feels fast. Beyond search and integration with Instapaper, however, it lacks any of the other "power features" that are the bread and butter of say, Twittelator Pro or TweetDeck, like grouping or multiple windows.
It's the opposite: A remarkably focused and well thought out exercise in restraint. It's the details like a timestamp marking every time you open the app so you know where you left off, that shine. If you only use the core Twitter features, Birdfeed is the best app you can buy.
That's not to say it's necessarily better than TweetDeck or Twittelator. The amazing thing about Twitter is that you can do whatever you want with it, and having all of those features is fantastic if you need them. Birdfeed is simply the most essential Twitter app for iPhone yet—it's only what you really need, beautifully designed.
It's not perfect—it freezes for a second when loading new tweets, like you hit the bottom of a timeline and starts pulling in more, and then there's that account amnesia bug.
But whether or not it's worth the extra $2 over Tweetie or the same $5 as feature-rich Twittelator Pro depends on how much speed, focus and design really matter to you. [Birdfeed, iTunes]
Gadgets: iPod + iPhone
US buys into new multitasking phone
Palm has reportedly sold over 300,000 Palm Pre handsets since its launch earlier this month according to analyst firm Charter Equity Research.
The news, which falls short of Apple's iPhone 3GS launch and Samsung's supposed 2m Jet handset pre-orders is no doubt still being seen as a positive by company staff keen to see the company come back from the grave.
Ed Synder, the analyst, who is making the claims, reports that the company is now making around 15,000 handsets a day as it hopes to push sales further following issues experienced in the first week of the handset on sale running out of stock.
It means Palm should reach the "magic" 1 million handset maker by the end of the quarter, giving it a nice headline with which to launch in the UK.
Outlining rumours already doing the rounds, Synder believes that other WebOS devices from Palm are coming, and not just to mobile operator Sprint in the US, suggesting that Verizon will get a WebOS powered handset some time in 2010.
In the UK Palm has yet to announce an operator for its new multi-tasking handset with some believing it will be either Vodafone or O2 to bag the deal when it eventually launches later this year.
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Related links:
Via - gizmodo.com
Tags:
Phones Mobile phones Palm Palm Pre Biz
Palm Pre sales top 300,000 originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:13:17 +0100
Gadgets: iPod + iPhone
This is supposedly a Dell Android Smartphone
The Wall Street Journal mentions an Android pocket device. Here's the description from their source: " slightly larger than Apple Inc.'s iPod Touch, which is similar to the iPhone but does not have cellphone capabilities". Wow, how many characters do you need to say "PDA" or "PMP" (Personal Digital Assistant and Portable Media Player)?
Of course, Dell declined to comment on an unannounced product, but it doesn't take much of an effort to speculate that the device will be an ARM-powered iPod touch competitor. The PDA market is pretty much dead, but PMPs like the iPhone touch still exist, even if recent numbers suggest that iPod is on the decline, most likely because of the iPhone.
Dell is also said to be developing Android netbooks and even smartphones. Let's wait and see.
Permalink: Dell Working On An Android PDA? from Ubergizmo | Hot: Wii, PS3 and Natal Motion Sensing
Gadgets: iPod + iPhone
There's an interesting list of benchmarks results on glbenchmark.com where you can compare the iPhone 3GS against other phones, including older iPhones. I did not spend a lot of time dissecting the results, but here's the bottom-line, when compared to the iPhone 3G:
The CPU performance is Faster by 40-70%
The fillrate* is 3x to 4x higher
Texture effects and filters are about 10x faster
This is a synthetic benchmark and real life performance might be different, but that gives you a good idea of what the hardware is capable of. Note that this is running OpenGL 1.x and that the iPhone 3GS can run OpenGL 2.x, which has more features. I guess that you had been warned when we said that the 3GS graphics performance would "shock" you (follow the link for more details). The Zune HD is probably the only handheld that could beat the 3GS. [glbenchmark via extremetech]
Permalink: iPhone 3GS Leads OpenGL Benchmark, By Miles from Ubergizmo | Hot: Wii, PS3 and Natal Motion Sensing
Gadgets: iPod + iPhone
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