Tweetie and Twitterfon are both iPhone Twitter clients with a large following. A mac version of Tweetie has recently been released, and it was this which prompted me to try out the iPhone version. I had previously been using Twitterfon, but decided to give Tweetie a bash. The following is a collection of my thoughts on both apps.
Twitterfon
Twitterfon is a free application which includes a number of nice features. It allows the user to update their location when they post a tweet using the iPhone’s built in location service. It also allows for photos to be uploaded via Twitpic, and has a built in web browser allowing links to be followed from within the app.
Other nice features include the ability to search for tweets near to your current location, automatic URL shortening and the ability to browse current hot trends.
All in all, Twitterfon is an application with a good set of features, but for me at least it is let down by its performance. It has only crashed a few times, but more frustrating is the process of following a link from a tweet. It usually takes a number of taps before it responds, and I sometimes find myself repeatedly hammering at the link button for what seems like ages. This is deeply frustrating, and really sours the whole experience for me.
Tweetie
Tweetie costs £1.79 – this is clearly £1.79 more than Twitterfon, but it does add a few features which make it worth the money. First is the ability to manage multiple Twitter accounts. Useful if you have (for example) a business account and a personal account. It includes all of the functionality of Twitterfon – you can search for nearby tweets, update your location, post to Twitpic (as well as yFrog of Mobypicture) and post shortened links.
The two big wins for Tweetie are integration with Instapaper ((Instapaper is an awesome little utility which allows you to save web pages for later veiwing. Perfect for a long article which you want to read later.)), and general stability. Taps are all registered correctly, and a small visual cue is given to show that it has happened – something which I feel is lacking in Twitterfon. In addition Tweetie has a few extras which make it easier to use Twitter – you can search for a user and view their profile, and you can view your own profile. This may not seem important, but in Twitterfon you need to search for a tweet which includes your username, and then follow a link from there (which can get annoying when the links aren’t responding to your taps).
Verdict
I guess you might have worked out by this point that I prefer Tweetie. It offers all of the features which I have come to expect from using Twitterfon and adds a few more. It seems more stable and responsive, and as a bonus I much prefer the ‘simple’ Tweetie skin (which can also be changed to ‘dark’ or ‘chat bubbles’) to the Twitterfon interface. In addition, Instapaper integration is an excellent feature.
All in all I would say that Tweetie is money well spent, and the value it adds over Twitterfon is worth the £1.79 cost.