Gravity: Twitter App for S60 phones

Grav2

I've always needed Twitter to be mobile for me to use it. It's what drew me to it in the first place. I am not always able to get to a computer and these days I can even blog from my phone. When Twitter texts were shut off while they tried to sort out their costs, I unintentionally temporarily jumped ship because I couldn't update easily. I want to be able to tweet and, more importantly, read others tweets on my phone. Now I can.

I currently am using my Nokia 5800 Xpress Music, and I use it for everything. Particularly Google but that's another story.

When I first got it I was using dabr, and Twitter's mobile site, neither of which were doing it for me. They were too simple. And in dabr's case, virtually impossible to accurately use on a touchscreen phone!
I then proceeded to use Slandr, which made it easier for me to Twitpic, but that was too complicated. (Does this remind you of Goldilocks and some technological version of porridge?)
Then I downloaded the trial version of Gravity. This was just right. It does everything but in a simple way, and it is designed for touch screen phone use. It also runs as a native application. Meaning that I can leave it on in the background, which is perfect, and exactly what I want from Twitter.

I can add multiple accounts (and yes I have mutiple accounts; one for me @sorayaleila and one for the dog @chaserory). Not only can I update these accounts but I can see them separately, with their separate people they are following.

I can see what is trending, and additionally to that I can add up to ten personalised searches which automatically update when you are online.

Which brings me to being online. With the new BETA updates you can opt to automatically connect to WLAN when you are in range, rather than using up your mobile data allowance.

When you want to tweet, you press NEW which is handily sat in the middle at the bottom of the screen, a box appears and allows you to write in a legible size! Amazing how many applications forget that it being readable is actually quite useful!

When you click on a tweet from a user you are following you are given several options. These are dependant on what the tweet includes. The general options are to see other tweets including that username, reply, follow/ unfollow, retweet, direct message and favourite. You also will have the option to see tweets by other users mentioned, open links and see other hashtag results. It's a good system, and as easy to use with a touch screen as can be expected. Sometimes you will accidently open these options when trying to scroll, but this isn't a major problem in my opinion.

You can post pictures from your phone directly to services such as Twitpic from Gravity. Other supported photo services are MobyPicture, Posterous and TwitGoo. Your most recent photos are automatically loaded in the application, and one touch allows you to choose to post them from the main screen (with it then asking and confirming which account you would like to post it to).

If I had one criticism of Gravity, it would be that if you have it running natively there is no way to look back through tweets you may have missed by, I don't know, living your life. A previous tweets button would come in extremely useful! Other users have said that they feel it would benefit from the option of groups... I have no opinion on this as I don't use them.

I'd recommend anyone with a S60 phone has a go with the demo model. Be aware however that after ten days this expires, which is highly upsetting. And then you are charged £8 to buy it, which is even more upsetting considering usual app prices. But hey, maybe it's worth it.

You can download the trial version of Gravity (and then the paid version) here at the Mobileways.de website.