Inspite of the availability of a dozen different twitter apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch, the race to be the best twitter client for the iPhone never ceases. And the newest entrant in the war of the apps is Tweetie, the amazingly fast and full-featured twitter client for the iPhone and iPod Touch. From atebits, the developers of Scribbles, Tweetie has replaced Twitterrific to become the most frequently used app on my iPhone. 

Let’s take a look at what sets Tweetie apart from the other Twitter clients and why it is the Supreme Champion among them.

Incredibly Fast:

The very first noticeable feature of Tweetie is its speed. The app incredibly fast in whatever it does. When you first launch the app, it takes 1 to 1.5 seconds to fetch the first 20 tweets from your timelime. From here, navigating to any other part of the app is just as fast. The UI is well designed with your ‘@replies’ , ‘Messages’, ‘Favorites’ easily accessible at the bottom. Hitting ‘More’ gives you access to the following:

• My Profile
• Following
• Followers
• Trends
• Search

Native Interface:

Tweetie is designed to look like a complete native app. The entire UI makes use of the iChat bubbles to display user tweets and messages, right next to a small display picture of the user. Clicking on each tweet takes you to a screen detailing information about the tweet. From this point, you can enter into a hierarchy of sub-pages, navigating through user details, their recent tweets etc. While viewing details about a user, you may even search for “@username” with a single tap, apart from viewing his recent tweets, sending him a Public Reply, Direct Messages.

Scrolling is butter smooth as expected and there is no lag while scrolling through a large number of tweets.

Multiple Twitter Accounts:

Tweetie has the ability to add multiple twitter accounts, which are listed in one single screen under ‘Accounts’. This screen is similar to the screen in the Mail app, if you have multiple mails accounts set up on your iPhone. Tapping on each account name takes you to the recent timeline of that account in exactly the same native UI as the iPhone.

Search and Trends:

Tweetie also has the options to watch the current trending topics on twitter. Tapping on any of the topics takes you to the most recent tweets by users containing that keyword. Here, Tweetie allows you to save the keyword, so you can come back later and search it again. 

Search is quite similar to the above and you can save your keywords for easy access later. This is a great way to keep up with certain topics on twitter.

Location, URL Shortening and Photo-Uploading:

Tweetie makes good use of the iPhone location features. When posting a new tweet, tweetie allows you to ‘Add Map Link’ to the tweet, which essentially takes your location co-ordinates, plots them using Google Maps, shortens the URL using http://bit.ly and enters it into the tweet. You also have an option to update the location on your Twitter profile from within the app.

When composing a new tweet, you may also add a photo from your Photo Albums or Click a new one, which is compressed and uploaded to TwitPic. 

If you encounter bad internet connectivity, Tweetie allows you to save your typed tweet as ‘Draft’, so you can continue and post it later.

Implementation of full Twitter API:

Tweetie makes full use of all the possibilities offered by Twitter’s API. Like Tweetsville, Tweetie too features a lengthy timeline and has the ability to fetch all the tweets from the time you last accessed it.

If you’re a power user like me, Tweetie is definitely built to your liking. All the more frequently used functions have been designed to be easily accessible, while leaving the less frequent ones away. The UI is great and Tweetie definitely feels like Apple’s own Twitter app. With a feature list as long as above, this is one app I’d highly recommend. Available for just $2.99 in the App Store [iTunes Link], Tweetie is just the app I’ve been waiting for.

Disclosure: I’ve been testing a beta build of the app, so the screenshots may not be the same as the final product.