A few days ago I went looking for the “perfect” Twitter iPhone app. I use Twitter a lot, and as an iPhone user I am looking for the best app with the best experience possible. I recently went looking around the intrawebs for a good comprehensive review of the more prominent Twitter apps for the iPhone, and I couldn’t find any. So I decided to write one myself.
I scoured the App Store for the top apps, paid and free. So I will be giving you a brief review of Tweetie, TwitterFon Pro, Twitterrific, and TweeDeck for iPhone. I have used each apps for one full week and tested them on a 16GB iPhone 3G.
FYI: All the apps I review in this post have been purchased with my own money and I have not been approached by any of these developers to review their programs.
Tweetie
Atebits, $2.99
Tweetie is a very user friendly, simple and elegant app for “tweeps” who live and die by their iPhones. When I originally switched to Tweetie when it was released I really valued it because it was capable of managing multiple accounts, it was actually one of the first apps that could do that, all the others followed suit. I found this one to be a very reliable app as it has NEVER crashed on me, which for any iPhone app is rare. It handles trends and searches very well, and it allows you to reply, view the user’s profile, or favorite a tweet by just swiping your finger to the left.
What I like most about Tweetie, and this applies to both the iPhone client and the desktop client for Mac, is atebits’ love of smooth, simple designs. The app itself is very quick and isn’t bogged down by anything unnecessary, which is a very important feature on a Twitter app. The point of Twitter is to get those quick thoughts out as soon as possible, and Tweetie will allow you to do that.
Things I would like to see in future releases are trivial. Some new alert badges on the icons at the bottom would be great. I also think that the themes that ship aren’t anything to write home about but hey, if the app is solid, which it is, the theme doesn’t really matter. Another thing that Tweetie is missing is the cacheing of past tweets. I don’t really see this as a bad thing, it keeps the app moving quickly and it doesn’t bog down your memory. However, I can see some hardcore tweeters needing to see past tweets quickly.
TwitterFon Pro
Naan Studio, Inc., $4.99 (FREE version available)
TwitterFon is one of the more feature rich Twitter apps on the App Store. I really like this app because it does everything Tweetie does, but it has a few little features that really come in handy. First of all, the app I am reviewing is actually the paid version of TwitterFon, TwitterFon Pro. This app includes all of the features of TwitterFon, but also has:
- support for multiple accounts
- 4 different themes
- landscape keyboard
- user authenticated bit.ly support
- instapaper integration
- and it’s ad-free.
What’s great about Twitterfon is the update badges it gives at the bottom whenever it refreshes with new Tweets. This is awesome because it allows you to actually see what you have before checking it. So say you don’t have any direct messages, you won’t have to go in and look. Another feature I really like is the fact that you have an address book of sorts that lets you go through names right from the new tweet window. That comes in handy when you want to tweet a friend but you forgot exactly how their handle is spelled.
Like I mentioned above, this version of TwitterFon supports multiple accounts. However, when it does handle multiple accounts I notice that it launches a very slowly at the beginning. I really didn’t like this because it slowed down the app significantly, which really prevented me from getting out a quick tweet. However if you are running this with one Twitter account, you’ll hardly notice anything. What I did like when using this to manage two accounts was that I could give a specific theme to each account. That went a long way to making sure I didn’t tweet anything from my personal twitter on to my work twitter.
The Search feature on TwitterFon is by far the best. Not only can it “fetch” trends quickly using a dedicated button, it also allows you to search, and pull Tweets that have been geotagged to your location using the iPhone’s built in GPS. It’s a cool feature that I hardly used, because I really didn’t care what people around me were tweeting.
As far as overall reliability I can’t say this is the stable Twitter app. It crashed a few times when I was in the middle of sending tweets to multiple people, and sometimes the landscape keyboard (which is a plus) wouldn’t come up when you rotated the phone. All in all good app, minor bugs.
TweetDeck
TweetDeck, Inc., FREE
TweetDeck is the iPhone iteration of the popular desktop client. What makes the desktop client so great is that it allows you to see a column-by-column view of everything Twitter, and the iPhone version is no different. Out of all the apps tested, TweetDeck has by far the best user interface. It allows you to swipe through the columns similar to the way you swipe through windows in Safari.
The column view is fantastic because it allows you to swipe through anything from your main feed, to mentions, to custom searches and trends feeds. While covering the Iran elections on my radio show, I used TweetDeck as my main program because it allowed me to monitor #iranelection prominently, rather than just as a search I’d have to initiate every single time.
Another great feature in line with the app’s design is it’s small notification system at the bottom left of the app. TweetDeck has hit that perfect balance of notifying you without annoying you and I really liked that.
However, TweetDeck is the youngest of these iPhone apps and as such it is the buggiest. The program crashed on me a few times, enough to get frustrated. Also there are some miner glitches in the app that I am sure will be worked out with time.
With a little time and a few updates don’t be surprised to see this app on the top of the hill. It has a great UI, and a great desktop client that allows you (by signing up for a free account) to sync columns between the iPhone and your computer, which comes in handy. But right now, it’s just good, but not great.
Twitterrific
Iconfactory, $3.99 (FREE version available)
Twitterrific is the grandfather of the Twitter Apps on the store as it was the first one ever. In the past year it has played catch up a bit and is now more robust than ever. There are two versions of this app, the one I am testing is the free version because the paid version basically removes the ads only. I really like what Twitterrific has become as far as design. It features nice themes and each section of the app is nicely color coded.
Twitterrific is also very rich in features now that it has been brought up to date and it matches the abilities of the others reviewed here. However, I found using Twitterrific to be a bit overwhelming. There was too much tapping to get to different things that usually takes me less time on the other apps. The app very feature rich don’t get me wrong but it is definitely very busy. Overall it was rather stable, in the week that I used it I didn’t experience a single problem.
The app also handles multiple accounts and has an interesting way of letting you see them. It displays any accounts, the public timeline, and searches all on this sort of “home page”. It’s a very nice touch and sort of streamlines the whole multiple accounts thing, which it does very well.
What it all comes down to is value. Twitterrific itself is a great free app, however if you are going to buy it just to do away with the ads you might as well spend $1 less and buy Tweetie or none at all and get TweetDeck or the free version of TwitterFon. Twitterrific was left in the dust after it’s launch along side the App Store. Innovations in iPhone software development have yeilded a much better type of Twitter app. Though Twitterrific is a good app, there are much better options, some even cheaper out on the App Store.
And the winner is…?
This is a tough choice, and all the Twitter app reviews I have read always start off like this. However I feel the clear winner here is Tweetie. Tweetie is solid, reliable and well designed. It has a good list of features that hardcore Twitter users can enjoy, and light tweeters can discover. It delivers tweets well, responds quickly, and never crashes. Who knows, in a few months we might see a contender, but for now Tweetie is the king of the Twitter app jungle. Sure it costs $2.99, but you definitely get what you pay for. If you have any questions post them in the comments and I will be glad to reply.
