Vine Arrives On Android With A Thud

Vine is a fairly popular social network and rapidly becoming, if nothing else, a source of comedy on the Internet. And now it’s finally on Android with a basic app. A very, very basic app.

Vine for Android works in the most basic sense: You can shoot the six second videos and post them, provided you’ve got Android 4.0 or above. But that’s pretty much all you can do.

Search? Nope. Front-facing camera support? Forget about it, which means no joy for you, Nexus 7 users. Facebook integration? Nope. Although to be fair, Facebook is legendarily pissy about letting anybody play with their toys and Vine is run by a direct competitor. So it might just be getting jerked around by Zucks and company, although apparently this is on the way.

OK, so it’s fairly basic, but you do get a Zoom feature, which we’re sure iOS Vine users will be complaining they don’t have in short order. The video recording itself works smoothly once you get used to the basic interface, and if you can get a tab up, viewing other people’s Vines is a snap. Of course, you can’t always get a tab up, and in fact the interface crashes a lot more than is really acceptable. It’s a little surprising this was rushed out the door in this state.

If you don’t need to get on Vine right away, wait. Fixes are coming for all the app’s major problems and new features will be added in short order. But if you need to start shooting Vines right away, this will serve your purpose.

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