Almost a year ago, Elon Musk-owned X announced that it would begin rebuilding its Android app, which didn’t perform as well as its iOS version. The company shipped an updated app on Monday, and it’s now available for download.
The new Android version of X is built from the ground up and promises improvements to loading, scrolling, notifications, and more, X said in an announcement.
This update took nearly a year to develop. Last August, Nikita Via, head of product at X, said the social network company was assembling an Android “dream team” to reimagine the Android experience. Later that fall, Company X also noted that October had one of its highest-ever weeks for Android downloads, which is why new apps were a priority for the company.
Commenting on today’s release, Beer described the effort as “one of the largest engineering projects” in the company’s history and said the new Android app was built from the ground up, rather than simply being updated.
“It’s faster, smoother, and more reliable. But most of all, it allows us to build new features super fast,” Beer wrote about X. The Elon Musk-owned social network has rolled out a number of new features in recent months, including X Money and X Chat, which now have their own standalone apps.
The release of Android could also encourage more users to download or return to X after years of neglect for the platform in global markets where Android is the dominant smartphone platform. (At one point last year, the Android issue was so bad that X apps couldn’t even load X posts when a user clicked on a link.)
But Beer cautioned that there are still some rough spots to iron out, including improving performance for older Android devices and adding support for Spaces, X’s live audio feature. These updates are still in progress. Bier added that other features are coming to Android soon, including a new video editor, React-with-video functionality, cache tags, and custom timelines.
Existing Android users can get the new X apps by updating their existing apps through the Google Play Store.
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