Like #NewTwitter? Twidroyd Is Bringing Two-Pane Browsing To Android


If you’ve tried New Twitter, you’re probably already hooked on the site’s slick two-pane browsing experience: tap on a tweet, and you’ll be able to view any linked YouTube videos, Flickr photos, and a variety of other content without having to leave the page. Today, popular Android client Twidroyd is bringing a similar experience to mobile phones, and in some senses it’s doing it one better — the application also allows you to read linked articles without having to fire up a separate browser window.

To access this live preview mode, you flip the phone on its side — tweets will fill the left sidebar, and tapping on one will open up the associated link or image in the right pane. Obviously you aren’t going to have a lot of real-estate to consume the content, but it seems to work well enough on my Nexus One (and I’d imagine it’s even better on a large screen phone, like the EVO). It’s a pretty slick feature, but it isn’t perfect — I’m finding that the performance suffers a bit as I try to jump between tweets, so navigation isn’t as fluid as I’d like. Still, it’s a good start.

Twidroyd has been around for a while, and established itself as one of the platform’s most popular Twitter clients early on. PostUp, the company formerly known as Tweetup, acquired the Android application in July — the app was formerly called Twidroid, but PostUp decided to tweak the name so as to avoid any possible legal issues down the line.

The application comes pre-installed on five mobile phones, including some Samsung models, but many of these installs are abroad (PostUp’s Steve Chadima explains that US carriers sometimes override deals that have been worked out with phone manufacturers). Chadima says that the application has seen around a million installs so far, 90% of which are free (the rest are for a PRO version, which runs $3.99).