As I've said on my other site today, I got an Android-powered HTC Magic for my birthday.
However, I'll forgo the joke I told there about what the term is for jail-breaking an Android smartphone.
While the Google
Android Market has a smaller amount of apps than
Apple's App Store, you find some good programs occasionally.
Today's discovery is an app called
Swift.
I'd call Swift a medium-level Twitter client for the
Android platform. You get a bit more than a simple updating client, but not quite as much as the
Seesmic Twitter client. You won't find
lists in Swift.
What you do get is a clean interface, as you can see in the graphic above.
In the top-right corner we see the balloon for new tweets. Below it, the timeline icons give you access to timeline, mentions, direct messages, search and profiles. When you press menu, you're given further options of new tweet, send saved tweets, change view, jump-to-now (refresh) and preferences.
Should you press on a particular user's tweet you get the reply and retweet buttons, along with an arrowed button for options to copy a tweet, copy a link to tweet, or save.
Admittedly, this app doesn't do as many tricks as, say,
Twidroid or Seesmic. Still, it's nice, clean, functional and effective.
Since I did bring up the topic of "
rooting the android" (call it a jailbreak if you're Australian so you don't wet yourself laughing at that unintended euphemism), I should mention a great custom firmware which improves on a lot of original Android functions.
Cyanogen has been one of the best developers of custom roms for the Android devices. His custom roms can be downloaded over-the-air through the
CM Updater and themed.
If you look at
the original Android desktop in the wikipedia entry on Android, you can see the need for a decent theme. In this regard, non-official devs are probably doing Android a favor.
The tab for the apps drawer definitely benefits from some great theming.
Although Android is an
open source system, there's still some debate on the topic of rooting the Android (and this is causing large amounts of laughter from Australians every time I use that term). By the same token, some good custom roms are actually better than the mainstream ones. They did NOT have the problem associated with Canada's Rogers G1s and HTC Magics
where emergency 911 calls couldn't be made while using GPS.
It's up to you whether you want to leave your Android phone stock, or whether you want to use a custom rom. If you're going to customize and gain root...make sure you read ALL the documentation and tutorials on it thoroughly. Just do your homework right and your phone will be quite good afterwards.
If you do choose a custom rom, make sure also to choose one where all the things you need are working perfectly. Devs make it clear which things do or don't work in each custom rom.
As long as one of the first things you put on a customized Android is the backup and restore recovery menu, you'll be fine.
Now I'm off to tweet some more with Swift...
