Twitter iPhone app slated for major upgrade

A new, improved edition of Twitter's iOS app may be around the corner for users less than thrilled with the current version.

Release notes and screenshots posted by 9to5Mac about the iOS 6 App Store seem to reveal a slew of changes destined for Twitter for iPhone version 4.3.

Among the features touted in the description are push notifications for tweets that you follow, an alert when new stories are available, better support for password entries, avatars that take you directly to someone's profile, and improvements to autocomplete.

Also promised are more interactive experiences within certain tweets, meaning the ability to view images and play videos. For people who don't like the generic Trends feature, you'll be able to create and customize your own trends. And the vague but always promising "performance improvements" are part of the new package, according to the screenshots.

Though the notes were discovered as part the iOS 6 App Store, iPhone and iPad users may not have to wait until iOS 6 is released.

No details were available on when the new Twitter app might launch. But 9to5Mac noted that the time between the discovery of release notes about a new version of Instagram and the update's actual debut was only ten days.

Twitter has run into challenges with its mobile apps, especially in the face of rival offerings such as Tweetbot and Twitterrific. The company received a host of complaints late last year after it removed some key features from its iOS app, prompting it to restore a couple of the lost features in a later update.