ubersocAccording to Google Play Store I’ve installed and rated UberSocial already - but for a different version. My review was not glowing but neither was it damning.

So what can this new UberSocial app bring forth to change my previous experience?

Well lets start as with all the other apps by getting my Twitter accounts loaded into it. Unlike @Hootsuite there is no webplatform so I had to manually install each account via the app. No difference to @Plume there then. Except there was in that this time when I came to install my protected account Twitter’s app summoned me I said yes and then on returning to UberSocial it was ready to authorise - no going back to the beginning and starting again or creating app specific passwords as for Plume. So already sneaking a head there. But not for long!

At this point I should make it clear that during my research into this app I discovered that UbserSocial, Echofon and Plume are all produced or at least marketed as being “third party” apps from UberMedia. Ubsersocial and Echofon show they come from Ubsersocial however Plume is much more well hidden in the grand scheme of things.

Just like Plume all my twitter accounts can be placed into a single timeline and thankfully just like Plume and old Twitter I have for my first three columns “Timeline”, “Mentions” and “Direct Messages”. It took me a few goes to find a theme was not white on white with whiteness - as I general tend for dark themes to reduce battery drain. But when I did that worked fine.

ubsersoc-batUnfortunately my initial happiness with the app soon ebbed away as I discovered it was slow, memory and power hungry. The common timeline function where you select all accounts often drifted off into one of my accounts showing that information alone. Or if I was tweeting it would pick an account at random often my protected account which it would then warn me it was tweeting from?

noadvertThe app as with Plume has adverts and full screen ones to boot. Fortunately there was significantly less of them but there was also oddly blank adverts? Yeah blank - go figure.

Pictures

Yeap pictures work well I say they work the orientation function works but not so much the uploading and sending. Day two into the test and I was trying to tweet existing pictures from my gallubsersoc-twidroidery. If I selected them in UbserSocial to send then it crashed - many, many times with an interesting crash message

ubsersoc-crash However if I use the gallery app to share via UbserSocial then it worked? Well it did for a while, once or twice, then it too crashed, over and over again - interestingly with a different message!

When it did work I did not like the way the picture upload interfaced with the tweet. Sometimes I think it has not worked until the tweet is sent and I find my picture there? Or in other cases it is not there!

Notifications

It also failed to alert me or to notify me on so many occasions for DMs I gave up expecting it to do so. I had changed the default timing from five minutes to 30 to reduce battery drain but then the app kept hitting a cache limit. Even so I can only remember receiving tweet notifications on day one and after that silence for DMs, retweets or mentions!

That is another thing it does not have the full “notifications” column more a mentions column so you do miss out on some information there.

Tweeting

The multiple account functionality was across the board also less developed than in Plume  from tweeting, retweeting, DMs - everything. If I looked at another twitter profile it would say I was not following it even when I was but from which account I was or was not following was unclear! In fact the system was so messed up I was not certain if I followed or unfollowed people when viewing from the “all” timeline.

The app itself would often tell me that there was either “Tweets found” or give me odd “404” messages as well?uber-soc404 ubsersoc-no-tweets

Which was frankly very annoying.

Conclusion

I guess the best way to conclude is to answer some questions:

**Did I tweet more than using Twitters’ own app? **

Only just! In fact I quickly stopped the whole experience was rather rubbish.

Would I pay to get the added features?

No way! Never. I could not wait to uninstall the app.ubsersoc-unins

By Sunday had you had enough?

ubersoc_battI had had enough by Monday evening! The app for me was just not stable. It was slow, it did not update, it was just horrible using it. Did I mention my battery was constantly draining flat and it was consistently the third biggest battery users!

Note:

The above includes images captured from device use of the app on an Android device. Copyright of logo and trademarked images belong to originating parties.