Summary

Twitter – the social network that challenges users to limit their musings to 140 characters – relies heavily on third-party apps.

We all have our favourite clients and the fact that there's so much to choose from is what makes it the most appealing for me personally.

Tweet Lanes has been causing a lot of commotion amongst Twitter users, which is why I decided to take the plunge and check it out for you all.

Tweet Lanes has a lot to live up to (think: Carbon and Boid, the latter of which has been improved recently). That said, the app has really carved out a spot for itself amongst Twitter users. The reason for its success seems to be that the app's developers have done a great job at updating the app peu à peu so as to bring it up to standard in regards to functionality.

Tweet Lanes starts up with a surprise: the first thing you see is the “Tweet Box”. It may take some getting used to, but the main advantage here is that users may respond to actions a lot faster this way. You want to to Tweet at several people from your timeline? No problemo, just select several Tweets and then respond via the Tweet Box. Post your own Tweets? Same principle: just type in whatever's on your mind and hit send. To my mind this is a very well thought out option.

Tweet Lanes comes with a few other features that some may say are essential to any good Twitter app. One of the last updates came with an option to respond to direct messages. A detailed view of a Tweet is also now possible, including the Retweets and conversation display.

The app can also be adapted to one's own preferences using the various context boxes. For instance, you could use one box for all of your own Tweets, and if you get fed up with this settings you can easily deactivate it.

Despite all the great recent updates there are still a few functions that are missing. For instance, I could imagine that a number of users are itching for a filter for various hashtags for individual users (very useful for product presentations from Cupertino or Mountain View), as well as notifications and auto-complete for names and hashtags. I can personally do without notifications seeing as I check my Twitter regularly, but I would be super chuffed to have an auto-complete function. It happens all the time that I can't remember another user's entire Twitter name and then have to go back and check. Auto-complete would thus really come in handy.

Bottom line:

To this date there aren't any all-in-one Twitter apps available in the Android landscape. Every app seems to be missing some function or another. The only app I've come across that seems to deliver on all fronts is TweetBot for iOS.

Tweet Lanes' big achievement is quite clearly the innovative and very useful Tweet Box. Still, I find the features listed above to be missing. That said, history has shown that the Tweet Lanes devs update the app and come out with great new features, so let's watch this space and see how the app develops.

Tweet Lanes does well in this category: both controls and the app's design are excellent. While there's no Tablet UI for 10” tablets, the app does look great on the Nexus 7.

The newest version of the app is quick to react and runs very smoothly. The general design adheres to Android guidelines for apps and comes in Holo design, making it a lot neater to look at than, for instance, Plume.

Pinch to zoom gestures are supported and controls feel intuitive overall.

There are only two themes to choose from (light and dark), making the graphic adaption somewhat limited. Apps such as Tweedle do better in this regard.

I've been testing Tweet Lanes for several months now and am quite content with its performance. It is very stabile and has yet to crash. The app's speed is also remarkable and other Twitter clients would do well to take a leaf out of its book.

Tweet Lanes is free and available from Google Play Store. There are no ads—yay!