For Twitter I use TweetCaster, much better than the official Twitter app, has many more features (longer than 140 tweets), which includes tapping a button to go straight to the top of your tweets.
With regards to having to press the power button, if you root there are mods out there that allow you to use the Volume Up, Volume Down buttons to unlock the phone, the new Bricked kernel allows you to swipe across the back, home and recent apps buttons to unlock the phone too.
Rooting and flashing a custom ROM really unlocks the power of the phone!![]()
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It's a daunting thing to do though as long as there isn't one standard way of doing it. Is there?

