Tzah 2.0

Following my previous review about Twibble mobile application, I was asked to try out TwitterMobile. The application is produced by Tricast Solutions from UK and is written in J2ME so it should work on many mobile phones in the market. However, currently it works only on Sony-Ericsson and Nokia S60 240*320 devices. Lucky for me, I have a Nokia 6210 Navigator phone which have the right screen size, so I could try the application.

Unlike Twibble, installation process is easy and user friendly. The user selects his phone type, enter his email and phone number and press the download button. Next, the user receives a special SMS message with a link to download the client. Pressing the link open-up the a mobile download page with a link to download the actual client. BTW, the mobile page seems to recognize the mobile model, but it turns out that’s due to the link. Meaning, the mobile site does NOT recognize the device’s user agent. This might cause problems for users who didn’t put the right model at the beginning of the process. It also means that Tricast could have saved 2-3 clicks till the actual download, but, it’s not a biggy.

Download completed, it’s time to test the application. If I had to describe the application user-experience in one word, it will  have to be – Wow! The GUI is beautiful, just like Tricast say in their site. Using TWUIK reach media engine, the application flows elegantly between tweets and application options. The menu is not your conventional left-button-opens-a-doll-menu, but rather, a cool, mac-like graphic choices. Great job there Tricast!

However, this is where the complements stop and the complains begin; and there’re quite a few of them. First of all, the user is not given a choice to save his password locally. More secured? maybe, but it’s annoying to type my 10-characters password. Next, the phone’s security manager prompt the user many times for web access approval. This is because the application is not signed-in with a certificate. Oh well, I could live with that (still, the GUI make up for it).

We’re not done though. Unlike Twibble, Twitter Mobile doesn’t have the option to open a link inside a tweet. But wait, there’s more! if you want to tweet, you can but there’s no option to attach a picture! How lame is that?! I mean, the main point (at least for me) for having a mobile twitter application, is to tweet about an interesting event and add a picture to it. That in itself was enough to persuade me to stick with Twibble, but it’s not over here.  Want to check your @replies or your @direct-messages? Sorry. You have to pay 1.99£ for that. Yes, you heard me. A fee for a free service. No way,  José.

The bottom line is that the application gets an A+ on the cool factor but fails in usability. Perhaps Tricast is using the client to demonstrate its TWUIK technology, I don’t know. I do know that if they hope to make serious money from the application itself, they will have to enable picture attachment, URL linking and most importantly, free basic services in twitter.