When one compares iOS and Android, one thing that is significantly different is how the two handle media such as music and video. Apple has always had a rock solid interface for dealing with media, and a large part of this is due to iTunes. This is where doubleTwist comes in. It might be the closest you’ll ever get to having the iOS music app on your Android device. While Android’s music app can handle any type of media you can throw at it, the interface is only just above sub-par, and there’s no easy way to sync your music to your Android device. doubleTwist takes the cake for one of the best music players for Android, but it can have its short comings.



First of all, doubleTwist’s interface is just pretty. You can immediately feel the iOS influence here. The menus are simple and arranged in a breadcrumb fashion. When playing a song, the album art is nice and big and the interface is dark. You’ve got the basic controls that you’d see in any media player. doubleTwist also has a clean and simple lock screen interface so you don’t have to fully unlock your device just to change the song. doubleTwist also natively supports Last.fm scrobbling, a feature that I have fell in love with. I was really impressed by the battery use by this app too. Even with Last.fm scrobbling enabled, I haven’t seen any significant battery drainage compared to any other music app out there.



What really sets doubleTwist apart from any other Android music player is its Mac/PC syncing application. As you can see, it’s heavily influenced by iTunes. However, it’s simpler than iTunes, something that I really like. I found myself only using iTunes to do two things, sync my iPod to my computer and play my music. iTunes is a great program, but it has a lot of bells and whistles that I rarely ever use. Oh, and did you notice that rainbow colored icon next to my phone under “Devices”? That’s doubleTwist’s AirSync addon, available at the Android Market for $4.99. It’s a small price to pay for supporting the developers of this awesome app.

doubleTwist is one of the best apps that is on my computer and phone right now. I’m a big music guy, and I’ve successfully replaced my iPod with my phone. However, there are a few things doubleTwist could improve on. For instance, as I said before album art is nice and big on the screen, but I somewhat wish it would fill the screen. I spent a lot of time going through and finding the highest resolution album art for my music, and I’d love to be able to take full advantage of it. It also has some problems with gapless playback making awesome song duos such as “Spilling Faith” and “Get There From Here” by Ben Harper and “Parabol” and “Parabola” by Tool less fluid. I also wish that the large widget (which is only available if you purchase AirSync) would have an option for a transparent background. I’ve seen a lot of people ask for this feature, and it would really make my home screen look that much better. I haven’t had any problems with the desktop app except that pairing my phone with AirSync was a little wonky, and the app itself is a little heavy on resources compared to iTunes (iTunes after a fresh start used 28MB of RAM on my computer, while doubleTwist used 80MB).

Overall, I would definitely recommend doubleTwist for the music enthusiast. The Android app along with its Mac/PC counterpart is an excellent replacement for iOS’s built in music app and iTunes. Also, I like how doubleTwist scrobbles your song-playing to build a better social music experience compared to iTunes and Ping. If you’ve been looking for iPod on Android, this is it.

I’ll sum it up with some scores
Functionality: 9/10
Interface: 10/10
Speed: 9/10
Battery Usage: 8/10

Recently, I picked up a Nexus S 4G to replace my LG Dare “feature phone”. It was quite a change in my life. Now I’m able to be connected to my friends and family whenever I want, and I don’t have to be tied to a computer! One service that I have always loved has been Twitter, but I often ran into the problem where I would be out and about and I would think to myself “That’s going on Twitter when I get home!” Thanks to Twitter’s official Android app, I can stop at the word “Twitter”.



If you’re also an iOS user like me, this interface of Twitter for Android probably seems pretty familiar. In fact, this is the same interface as Tweetie, or what we now know as the official Twitter iOS app. How does Twitter for Android step up against other Twitter clients? Let’s take a look.

As far as functionality, Twitter for Android doesn’t have any features that separate it from its siblings. “Pull down to refresh” works just how it did, and you can still swipe on an individual tweet to reveal more options such as “Retweet” or “Reply”. This app does one thing, and it does it very well. It was built for accessing your Twitter account. It is relatively fast, and it’s extremely easy to navigate. You have all the basic Twitter functions such as creating a new tweet, viewing your current timeline, searching for tweets or users, and you have the ability to follow trending topics. All of these functionality in one free, easy to use, and ad-free app. I would normally consider that as a perfect trinity of holiness for an app, but Twitter for Android does have a couple of things that set it back compared to other Twitter clients.

One great thing about TweetDeck or even the official Twitter app for Mac (my personal favorite Mac Twitter client) is that they can handle multiple accounts. This is where Twitter for Android falls short. Maybe it’s because the Twitter web client can only handle one account, or maybe it’s just because the average Twitter use only has one account. Either way, I think a lot of people are singled out here. The great thing about Twitter is that you can quickly and easily send a message out to the world. This has many fruitful benefits for businesses. There are many businesses today from big to small that utilize Twitter for advertising and even support. It allows the business and its clients to easily and quickly communicate. Now I know what you’re thinking, the support people for Walmart or other big businesses aren’t going to support their customers through Twitter on a phone, but what about small businesses? I believe Twitter for Android missed out on a key feature that seemingly ever other Twitter client has. I’ve also noticed that Twitter has been eating my battery. On my phone, I have it so it pings back to Twitter every 5 minutes to refresh my feed. That’s not too often. For some reason, however, Twitter is using more of my battery than even the display, and I’m on WiFi! I thought it was worth mentioning.

Overall, Twitter for Android is packed full of features that the average user needs. It’s easy to use and quick. However, through my testing I found that it drained the battery more than I would like it to. I also believe that Twitter made a mistake by not incorporating the ability to handle multiple accounts. It’s a great app, but it’s faults are the reason I can’t recommend it as a default Twitter client.

I’ll sum it up with some scores
Functionality: 8/10
Interface: 9/10
Speed: 8/10
Battery Usage: 6/10

Ahh the OS X dock. A place where applications can come together. However, these are not ordinary applications, these are the applications that are used the most often. I have compiled a list for you of what I currently have in my dock, and what makes them so great.
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