aarika reservist: Slices for Twitter for iPhone review

Slices is a beautiful new iPhone Twitter client that unlike any Twitter client you've seen before. It's loaded with features, has a gorgeous look, and is extremely responsive. The name Slices refers to feature that lets you chop up your timeline into mini user-created feeds called Slices.

The first thing you're probably wondering is, how does a "Slice" differ from a "List"? Frankly, I have no idea. Slices does conveniently automatically create Tech & Science, Celebs, and TV & Movies Slices, but any other slices must be created on your own. Or, if you've already spent time creating lists, you can just view those in the Slices app instead.

If you can get over the confusing overlapping functionality of Slices and Lists, Slices for Twitter is actually a very beautiful and fast Twitter client. A lot of thought was put into its design and it's incredibly responsive. One of my favorite features is that along the top of the timeline, there are tabs for home, mentions, and direct messages. Tapping one of these does not switch your timeline view, but quickly pops up a little box that displays the desired Tweets. If you want to change your main timeline view, you can do so via the left side-panel.

Slices also has a mute feature called Zip It. With Zip It, you can choose to have any user, #trend, or keyword temporarily hidden from your timeline. Unzipping is very easy and quick to do.

The Explore feature of Slices is a bunch of popular Twitter users separated into sections. Along the top is a left-to-right scrollable list of sections and tapping on one will show the users in that list. Some sections are further separated into categories. For example, the Sports section has categories for Headlines, NFL Football, Baseball, MBA basketball, etc. One of the sections that many people may find useful is Live Events.

Slices is available for free, but is ad-supported. The ads can be removed with an in-app purchase for $4.99. Unfortunately, Slices doesn't support push notifications.

The good

Gorgeous
Blazing fast
Explore sections and categories of users
Live Events stream
Shortcuts to you popups of your timeline
Zip It feature (mute)
Bookmark your favorite Twitters users and lists

The bad

Does not support push notifications
What's the advantage of creating a Slice?

The conclusion

The first thing that popped into my head when I launched Slices for Twitter was "ohhhh! Pretty!" I'm definitely a big fan of its looks. Next, I become incredibly confused (and still am) about the appeal of creating a Slice when I already have Lists. Further, why would I spend time creating a Slice when it's not going to be carried over to any other Twitter clients I may choose to use? But after I moved on and starting diving into everything else in Slices, I was continually more and more impressed. It's filled with the "little things" that, together, create a beautiful experience. Not to mention -- it's smoking fast. Since Slices is free to download, I recommend all Twitter users as least give it a try. What do you have to lose?