Twitter is one of the microblogging sites where most of us are always active, directly or indirectly. Especially when we have the smartphones to take the full advantage of, one of the apps can be used to keep ourselves connected to others through either the microblogging sites, the social networks or the messengers. Twitter has got its official Android app but we keep looking out for the better options which have advantages in both the user experience and the productivity. One of the alternatives for the twitter app which actually has loads of options and features, is the Falcon for Twitter app for Android.
The Falcon app would let you control the entire account of yours directly from a single widget. You get to see and do everything on Twitter, including checking out the timeline, open each tweet, Direct message, checking Twitter profiles, Checking out Mentions/Conversations, Checking the Favorites, Trending lists and lot more.
The widget is customizable, and the size of the widget can be changed based on your wish. The sizes could be 4×4 or 4×2, and it would look the best when you have the widget covering the entire home screen, where you can view the tweets in a better way. Every tweet or profile page would have options – A tweet will have the options to reply, retweet, favorite or share it. A profile would have the options to Follow/Unfollow, DM the user or Mention them.
Settings in the Falcon App
- Refresh rate – You can choose to manually refresh the timeline, or set it to automatically refresh every 5 min, 10 min, 15 min, 20 min, 30 min, 1 hour or 2 hours.
- Set to sync only only when WiFi is turned on
- Change the notification sound, and enabling/disabling the notifications on new mentions
- Silent Notifications setting
- Display settings include the Widget Layout, The Font Size, the Text and Link colors, and the Date/Time format
There are quite a few settings in the “Unread Management” section of settings which you can play around with, based on your need.
While posting a new tweet through Falcon, you could just enter the status, or add a picture either through your gallery or the dropbox folder if it’s there in your Android phone, or can click a new picture using the camera instantly, and select whether you wanted to share your location with your Twitter followers, while posting that particular tweet.
A single shortcut would open a list of options from where you could open the Trending List, Direct Messages, Lists, Search section and the Settings. The direct messages come one below the other, which would have been better if there was a threaded view, but we might be seeing that in the next updates. What we are impressed with, is the way you get the options directly from everywhere to do the stuff with shortcuts.
If you are not totally satisfied with the Twitter app for Android, and always were looking an alternative which could provide more, then Falcon would be our best suggestion. Head to the Play Store to download the app. What more? It’s free and there are no annoying ads which you might have had to pay to get rid of!
We’ve seen the developers working on the Beta versions of the Falcon Pro, which is not any upgraded version of this but a dedicated Twitter client that comes as an app so you don’t need to worry if you are going to use this Falcon app for a long-term usage, as a widget on your homescreen, or even on the Lock screen in the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean version.
