The official Twitter for Android client — even after its new Holo-fied update — is terrible. It takes ages to load new tweets, does not make use of expandable notifications on Jelly Bean devices, and the color scheme is an eye-sore.

Thankfully, the Play Store is now filled with a bunch of polished and feature-filled third-party Twitter clients that are much better than the official client in almost every way. To help you pick the best one for you, we’ve compiled a list of our favorites.

Check out the best third-party Twitter apps for Android below.

Falcon Pro — $1.99

Unarguably, Falcon Pro is the most popular Twitter client in the Android community right now. In just a short time, the developer has managed to convert Falcon from a basic Twitter client to one that offers a plethora of features like starred users, pre-fetching of images, videos and articles embedded in tweets for offline reading, interactions, individual user notifications, and much more.

It does lack push notifications, however, which can be an instant deal breaker for many. But on the bright side, Falcon Pro’s developer — Joaquim Vergès — is actively working on the app, and pushes a new bug fixes and feature-rich updates nearly every fortnight.

It can’t be long before notifications arrive, then.

Robird — $1.99

Robird is a relatively new Twitter client for Android, but has become the go-to app for many because of its super smooth scrolling and performance. Perhaps the most important feature of Robird is push notifications.

On the features side, Robird includes nearly all of the basic features like TweetMarker sync, auto complete, in-line image previews, Jelly Bean notifications support, DashClock widget extension and drafts. It does lack muting and filtering of tweets, though.

Robird has a simple Holo theme, including a white one, but both of them do need further polishing. The developer is very responsive and eagerly responds to all feedbacks, and has been incorporating new features and fixing bugs with a new update coming out nearly every week.

Plume for Twitter — $4.99

Plume is among the oldest Twitter clients available on the Play Store. It’s also one of the most customizable, and packs in as much features as Falcon Pro, if not more. Plume also lacks push notifications, which the developers (LevelUp Studio) cannot fix until Twitter provides them access to the necessary APIs, but its feature list makes it one of our favorite Twitter clients for iOS.

Tweedle — Free

Tweedle is a simple and free Twitter client for Android aimed at novice Twitter users. The app has super smooth scrolling, looks pleasing to the eyes, and offers quite a bit of customization options as well. It includes some, if not all, of the basic features like TweetMarker support, in-line media previews, background updates, and Jelly Bean notifications support.

One of the strengths of Tweedle is that it supports multiple Twitter accounts that is a rarity among the Twitter clients available on Android.

The developer is currently working hard on bringing a tablet-optimized layout and other features such as widgets and lists support.

Twidere — Free

Twidere is another simple, open-sourced, free, and holo-themed Twitter client for Android. The app is pretty lightweight and includes all basic features like muting, filtering, and in-line media preview. Whatever feature Twidere lacks, it makes up for it with the support for Extensions, which automatically expand the capabilities of the app.

Some of the popular extensions available on the Play Store include a streaming extension, Imgur uploader and TwitLonger extension.

The latest update to Twidere has broken streaming, though, and the timeline scrolling is a bit jerky as well, which is something to bear in mind. Even then, if you are looking for the best holo-themed Twitter client on Android, Twidere wins the competition hands down.

Conclusion

There are a plethora of other Twitter clients available on the Play Store as well. Carbon, for one, is the most polished Twitter client available on the Play Store. However, the app has already reached its limit of 100k tokens assigned by Twitter, so new users won’t be able to use the app.

Twitter has also been working on improving the official Twitter client for Android. Over the last month-and-a-half, the app has gotten multiple updates to give it a Holo look and improve performance and stability. Even then, the official client has a lot of catching up to do compared to all the third-party Twitter clients mentioned above.

Personally, we prefer Falcon. Not only does it pack almost all of the right features, but it’s also one of the most polished Twitter clients on the Play Store, and that’s something we really appreciate.

What’s your favorite? Let us know in the comments section below.