There’s no indication of whether this feature will come to Android, the dominant global mobile OS. Given iOS is North America’s most popular mobile OS by far, it indicates where Twitter’s priorities might lie. Twitter designer Maya Patterson and engineer Rémy Bourgoin said in a blog post that if your audio goes over 140 seconds, the app will automatically continue recording and place the next section of audio into a threaded tweet. They said the feature would be limited to “a limited group of people on Twitter for iOS to start” but that in a few weeks all iOS devices would receive the update. Thankfully you can play audio tweets from any version of Twitter, not just iOS though iOS will play the audio in a player at the bottom of the app and will continue to play in the background if you switch apps or lock the device.
One quirk of the feature is that your profile picture at the time you tweet an audio clip becomes attached as a static image that won’t change if and when you change your profile picture in the future. Audio is not exactly a feature that Twitter users have been crying out for but it is at least a sign that the company is trying to improve its product, which on the face of it has barely changed since its creation in 2006. Also given Twitter’s recent push to crack down on misinformation, it might prove a new difficult medium to moderate. Henry is Tech Advisor’s Phones Editor, ensuring he and the team covers and reviews every smartphone worth knowing about for readers and viewers all over the world. He spends a lot of time moving between different handsets and shouting at WhatsApp to support multiple devices at once.
