Nearly a year after announcing its intention to rebuild the Android version of its application due to its subpar performance compared to its iOS counterpart, X, the social network owned by Elon Musk, has officially launched the refreshed app. It became available for download on Monday.
The new Android application for X has been completely re-engineered from the ground up, promising significant enhancements across various functionalities, including loading times, scrolling fluidity, and notification reliability, as detailed in X's official announcement.
Addressing the improvements, the company stated, "We've completely rebuilt the Android X app from the ground up. It's faster, smoother, and more reliable than the old version in every way. We modernized the foundation so everything just feels better: scrolling, loading, notifications, you name it."
This extensive update has been in development for almost a year. Last August, Nikita Bier, X's head of product, revealed plans to assemble an Android "dream team" dedicated to overhauling the user experience. He later highlighted in the fall that October saw one of X's highest-ever weeks for Android downloads, underscoring the critical priority of this new application for the company.
Coinciding with the release, Bier characterized the project as "one of the largest engineering efforts" in X's history, emphasizing that the new Android app was a complete rebuild rather than a mere update to existing code.
The comprehensive Android rewrite was described as a significant human engineering achievement by the X team, executed on a modern Kotlin + Jetpack Compose stack. While AI tools like Grok assist developers daily, this particular project was a testament to the team's direct contribution and expertise.
“It’s faster, smoother and more reliable. But most of all: it will enable us to build new features at lightning speed,” Bier affirmed on X. The social network has been actively introducing several new functionalities recently, such as X Money and X Chat, which have also been released as standalone applications.
This Android release holds the potential to significantly boost user engagement in global markets, where Android is the dominant smartphone platform. It aims to attract new users and encourage existing ones to return to X, particularly after years of perceived neglect of the platform. Previously, issues on Android were so severe that the X app struggled to load posts when users clicked on links.
However, Bier cautioned that some refinements are still necessary, specifically mentioning the need to improve performance on older Android devices and to integrate support for Spaces, X’s live audio feature. These enhancements are actively being pursued. Bier also confirmed that additional features, including a new video editor, the react-with-video function, cashtags, and custom timelines, will soon be rolled out to Android users.
Existing Android users can access the new X app by simply updating their current application through the Google Play Store.
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