Boid – A Free, Slick Twitter Client [Android 4.0]

Boid – A Free, Slick Twitter Client [Android 4.0]:
Android 4.0, or Ice Cream Sandwich, has its own distinct look, which can mainly be described as “flat, black, and animated.” Once you start using ICS, apps designed for older versions of Android might feel a bit clunky. They are often not as smooth and fluid as native ICS apps. Once you get used to swiping left and right to switch between tabs or parts of an app, not being able to do so might seem like a drag on your user experience.
So the quest begins for native ICS apps, and today, I give you Boid. This is a slick, elegant Twitter app that is still in its beta testing stages, and requires Android Ice Cream Sandwich to work.

The Boid Experience

On its homepage, Boid touts itself as “not just a new Twitter experience” but an “entirely new way to experience Twitter“. It’s this sort of inflated marketing copy that damages apps, in my opinion. Let’s be clear from the get-go – Boid is not an entirely new way to experience Twitter. In fact, it is remarkably similar to my current client of choice, Plume.
But that’s a good yardstick to be compared to. Boid can (mostly) hold its own against Plume, and that means it’s an excellent app. Above you can see the account management screen – Boid will let you add more than one Twitter account.

This is the timeline screen, and general stream management interface (Messages, Mentions, etc.). Very ICS. You can tap each tab to switch to it, but swiping left and right works too. This is the column management interface:

You can remove columns by swiping them off the list (again, a native ICS gesture), and adding new columns. Boid won’t let you rearrange columns just yet, but the developers say this is coming soon. If you long-tap a column, it becomes the default one.
Animations are smooth and responsive, and the interface supports several color schemes:

This is the MIUI Orange theme. Not my cup of tea, but if you like a lighter theme, you might be happy with it. Just for comparison, this is what the latest version of Plume looks like:

See the striking resemblance? And much like Plume and many other Twitter apps, Boid uses “pull to refresh” :

You can also use Boid to check out Twitter trends, be they Daily, Weekly, or Local:

Tapping a trend simply runs a Twitter search for it, which looks like this:

You can see tweets related to your search term, as well as accounts which match it:

If you’re using a Twitter app, you may actually want to tweet now and then. Boid’s New Tweet screen looks like this:

A pretty simple design. Attaching an image did not work for me. Boid ran the default camera app and let me snap an image, but then did nothing with it – my test tweet was sent without an image.
One thing you won’t be seeing on this screenshot tour is a widget. Boid doesn’t have one yet. That’s an unfortunate shortcoming, because a widget is one of the handiest ways to keep up with your Twitter feed. Plume has a lovely 4×1 widget that shows one tweet at a time. Once Boid implements something like this, it would be on par with Plume.

Final Thoughts

So the question remains – what makes Boid better than Plume or other leading Twitter clients? At the moment, virtually nothing. The only reason to go with Boid rather than Plume at the moment is that Boid is ad-free, and Plume’s free version has ads. Time will tell if Boid will manage to evolve into something truly new, or end up as just another Twitter client. That said, it is certainly a solid implementation, and it does feel native on ICS.
If you have Ice Cream Sandwich, give Boid a whirl and then let us know in the comments what you think of it.