Twitch should be your destination of choice if you want to check out real-time gameplay streams, from e-sports competitions to gameplay demos. The streaming video service is available on several platforms including mobile (the Android version is reviewed here), home video game console (PlayStation 4, Xbox One), and desktop. The Twitch Android app lets video game voyeurs view the service's many professional and hobbyist live streams, but there are a few limitations found in this mobile version that aren't present in the desktop and console apps.

Getting Started With Twitch

The simply designed Twitch home screen makes accessing content a breeze, but it isn't nearly as pretty as its panel-driven, iOS 7-powered Twitch for iPhone counterpart. The upper-third portion of the home screen has icons that let you browse streams by game title or user channel. If you log in with your Twitch credentials, you can view updates from the channels you follow (as you would with YouTube).

The Featured Games section highlights six of the most-viewed games, which gives you a look at what's popular across the Twitch network. Unfortunately, certain games such as Dota 2 and League of Legends are so popular that they're always in Featured Games, which creates an element of sameness to a section that should be about content discovery.  Twitch could greatly benefit from human curation that would also highlight under-the-radar games that are building an audience.

Tapping a game's thumbnail image takes you to a screen that displays all the currently streaming instances of that game. For example, when I clicked the Metal Gear Solid icon, a page loaded that contained over a dozen Ground Zeroes streams. You can, of course, search for streams by game title, or browse the full game list.

The Viewing Experience

A Titanfall feed smoothly streamed to my Samsung Galaxy Note II via Wi-Fi (and via 4G) even under the weight of heavy mech-shooting action. Should you encounter streaming hiccups, there are four video settings to choose from (High, Medium, Low, and Mobile) to tweak the the experience. Initially, I saw some video stuttering when the stream quality was set to High, but knocking the quality down to Medium alleviated the issue. Like the Twitch desktop app, Twitch for Android served up several unskippable ads during my time with the software. Twitch could do well by taking a cue from YouTube which lets users skip some ads after watching them for five seconds.

You can watch videos without creating an account, but if you want to participate in a chat, you must sign up (or log in with your Facebook account). Creating an account has its benefits, though. You can follow other channels so that you'll know when new content goes live (much like subscribing to a YouTube channel), and you can participate in game chats. You cannot, however, broadcast gameplay sessions of, say, Angry Birds. You'll need the desktop or console Twitch apps for that functionality.

Twitch displays each video's live viewership, total views, and follower total. The videos are ad-supported, but, if you pony up $8.99 for the Turbo premium, Twitch removes display and video ads (but you'll still see front-page takeovers). Dedicated users and businesses looking for streaming video presence will want to pay for a premium membership because the in-video ads are unskippable and pull users out of the experience.

Scratching the Twitch

Twitch for Android is a solid app for extending the Twitch video-watching experience to Google-powered smartphones, but if you want to broadcast gameplay, you'll have to migrate to the PC or console apps. It's not the complete Twitch experience, but it's worth a download if you want to catch a Street Fighter IV tournament while killing time.