My iPhone twitter story has started from Twitterrific’s basic client, to a small two-day stint with Tweetsville, and I’ve finally settled on Tweetie. However, twitter client choices are extremely subjective. So when Twittelator Pro went 2.0, I had to give it a look.
Let me get past the obvious stuff first. Twittelator is a fast client, packs in most of the features that you would expect, including multiple accounts, twitter searches, favourites, trends, the usual suspects. You can see a whole rundown of the features list on the features page.
As I review this app, I will no doubt have to compare it with Tweetie, which I use on a daily basis. So what’s so great about Twittelator Pro then?
User Interface
I can’t say I’m very fond of the dark text on a grey background (the other themes are poor), but I guess that’s just subjective. Reading tweets quite pleasurable, but Tweetie’s clean theme is far superior to this (its other themes are also horrible). Twittelator Pro follows similar UI principles as Tweetie, with the tab arrangement at the bottom. Reading through your tweets can be done by flicking your finger as you normally would. But that’s where the similarities end.
Twittelator has a lot of different guestures and hot zones that do different things. If you double tap at the top/bottom area, it scrolls down a page of tweets. If you tap and hold a name, it will bring up the tweet options (reply, DM, retweet, etc). If you tap an avatar, it will bring up the user profile. Tweetie does edge out in the looks department when it comes to looking at a profile, but considering that Twittelator shows you much more info in the same space, I don’t mind the slight mess.
Writing Tweets
The writing window is fully featured. Apart from photo uploading and adding your GPS location, you can also paste something in. Wait what? In the tweets list, you can copy things like urls and entire tweets just by tapping the name. These can then be pasted in here. There is also emoji support built into the app (I’m not sure whether it is emoji per sé, but there’s a bunch of emoticons you can use). You also get to choose if you want to have auto correct/capitalise turned off, which will be a welcome change for those who type in SMS-spk.
You can browse through your friends list if you want to @someone. And lastly, landscape support for tweeting. However, they always find some way to mess up a good thing, and with this one there’s no way to turn off the landscape support.
UI enhancements
There are other UI refinements as well, like the fact that Twittelator shows you a thumbnail of any twitpic upload in the tweet list. The reply chain view is also much better, as it shows you an at-a-glance view of the chain instead of going through them one by one.
The Auto-refresh is also a welcome change. With unread count showing up for Messages and Replies, the auto reply becomes very useful if you find yourself constantly browsing tweets. Personally I’m not too hung up on auto-refresh on an iPhone client, but I’ve had a few people hound me after my recommendation of Tweetie and the lack of auto-refresh there on.
Loaded with features
If Tweetie has a slightly better looking user interface, Twittelator trumps that with a whole lot of more features and customization.
Twittelator’s settings, which are right there in the app itself allow you to switch between a lot of options, including url shortening services, photo uploading services, as well as Instapaper support. Trust me, there’s a whole lot of settings (which is a good thing). Having your twitter client customised to your liking is much better than my-way-or-the-highway approach that Apple uses.
I love the subgroup support. You get to specify which friend’s tweets show up in the subgroup. So I’ve created a subgroup for the news twitter feeds, the tweets of team SA. You also get to add people who you are not following. Want to keep track of your enemy’s tweets, but don’t want to follow? Yes, it’s possible with subgroups.
The favourites view shows you only favourites for those people who’s profile you have viewed. This reduces a whole lot of clutter, although it is very confusing to find just a few people in there and no intuitive way to add more.
One other important thing possible, is customizing which tabs show on your main screen. Similar to arranging tabs in the iPod app, you can move subgroups and searches down to the main screen, while leaving favourites and settings in the “More” screen.
The Switch
Overall, Twittelator is a very powerful client, with a good user interface, and is loaded with awesome features. At $4.99, it’s not the cheapest twitter client, but if you can get past the grey tweets window, the comparatively clunky UI, Twittelator Pro is the new twitter client that rocks the iPhone. I personally haven’t finalised on whether I want to stay on with Twittelator or move back to more familiar Tweetie, but I’m seriously inclined on sticking with Twittelator Pro. The only thing holding back my full judgement the smoother UI of Tweetie. I guess as time goes by, my tweets will speak for themselves.
If you’re already a Tweetie user, I don’t see why you would want to switch (unless you’re dying for those features). However, if you’re riding along on a free twitter client, or god forbid Twitterrific, you need to move quick. The choice is yours: More features on Twittelator Pro, or a better user interface with Tweetie.
A second opinion: Preshit
Having used Twitterrific, TwitterFon, Tweetsville and Tweetie, the features offered by Twittelator are nothing short of fantastic. The developer has managed to integrate a lot of features, much of which will be welcomed by the users. However, having praised the feature set, I should also make a note that the UI of the app just doesn’t feel at home. It’s too clunky and superficial. After an hour of usage, I wasn’t too happy with the UI elements. The app also tends to slow down at times.
In the end, in a market where most of the users have moved over to Tweetie, the features offered by Twittelator, specially the ability of create sub-groups should manage to pull in the heavy users.
As seen from his tweet source, Preshit continues to use Tweetie as his iPhone client.
