Twitter Launches An Android Tablet Optimized App For The First Time — On One Tablet

In what is a poignant statement about the state of Android tablet apps, Twitter has announced the first tablet-optimized version for the platform. It’s been 3 years since the iPad hit and Android tablets have blown up in the meantime, but this is the first time they’re being served with a real app.

Twitter says that the app is rolling out on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 first but will roll out to other Android tablets by the end of the year. Twitter says that it’s included some Samsung-specific features like multi-screen view for the in-app browser, a Twitter widget for the home screen that allows basic twitter actions and shows breaking news customized to countries.

There’s also a ‘tweet illustration’ feature that lets you doodle on pictures with Samsung’s ‘S-Pen’.

One of the strengths of the Android platform is that most of its phone apps will run just fine on tablets, due to flexible layouts and encouragement early on from Google to build them that way. But since the early days of Android, the tablet market has exploded and Google has changed its tune. It has begun encouraging developers to produce tablet-specific layouts for their apps, providing for better experiences on larger screens.

Much of the impetus for this is the fact that there are an incredibly small number of apps on Android that are designed with a tablet in mind. On Apple’s iPad, there are thousands.

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