Overview
The battle still rages to find the perfect Twitter app. The Play Store is flushed with them, however, it remains that there are only a few that dominate. And what’s crazy is that, at the bottom of that top contenders list, is where the official Twitter app lies. Now looking to push the official app even lower is Flamingo for Twitter from Sam Ruston, the creator of Weather Timeline.
Developer: Sam Ruston
Cost: $0.99
Review
Right out of the gate you can see that Flamingo has really embraced material design. It uses gestures to change from timeline, mentions, messages, and any other page you wish to add.
Once you click the traditional hamburger menu, you are given those exact same options plus an activity page, profile and your lists. Clicking the settings option opens the possibility of customizing several features to your liking, such as themes, navigation, fonts, and more.
The timeline is laid out in one nice solid color, with a short line dividing the tweets. That color will depend on your currently selected theme, but more on that later.
Once you click on a tweet, you are given all the options you expect from a Twitter app, like retweet, like, quote, etc. Also, when you click a link, it will open a built-in browser so you don’t have to leave the app. The app fully supports GIF playback, with the option of turning off autoplay in order to save your precious data allowance.
When composing a tweet, you have the option of adding your location, pictures, and GIFs, just like in many popular Twitter apps. What’s cool is that, if you have second thoughts about your tweet and don’t want to send it right now, you can save it to your drafts and send it later. It also has autofill when typing in a Twitter handle, which is always handy.
Direct Messages are the same as all apps, except it doesn’t give you the option to delete a conversation, which is a bummer.
Whether you want a preset theme, or really get in there and dig in, Flamingo has it. There are 12 different preset themes that you can choose from. These presets are so diverse that you probably won’t need to do more, but, if you want to, you can change the colors of everything from title text, links, header, and more.
You can also add more pages to the home screen, with content such as specific lists, search, and trends. This adds a lot to customization and really helps in making it your own.
You also have total control of your notifications. You can turn them off individually or all of them with one tap. If you wish to defer notifications to a later time in order to save battery, you can activate the Power Savings mode.
Finally, there are a few awesome features in the Advanced settings entry that I wanted to point out. The first up is turning on/off hover preview. This allows you to long press profile pictures to preview them. Also, Flamingo allows you have different themes for different accounts. This isn’t unique to them, but good nonetheless, especially for a first release.
Conclusion
This is a solid first release by the famed developer Sam Ruston, but a tall order to compete with the likes of Fenix and Talon. I do think it’s better designed than the official app. The developer do needs to add scheduled tweets, as many people depend on this feature. While it is missing that, it does make up for it in price and other useful features. At only one dollar, it’s by far cheaper than the rest. I would suggest giving it a try.
Download and install Flamingo for Twitter from the Google Play Store.
