iTwitter

Posted on July 14th, 2009. Written by Trevor.

With so many twitter clients both free and paid for, does the iPhone really need another one? Well, Nibiru Tech Ltd seem to think so with the release of iTwitter v1.0.

I can imagine, like myself, most (if not all) serious Tweeters, if that is in fact the correct term, have already tried a number of Twitter clients and have long since settled on their favourite, be it Tweetie, Twitterfon, Tweetdeck, Twitterific, I’ll stop now as it would take far too long to list every client available. So can iTwitter really hope to prise you away from your current client?

Lets start with the basics, iTwitter ticks all the boxes that you would look for in an app of this nature, it handles multiple accounts, you can search, mange your favourite tweets, retweet, reply, DM, upload to twitpic, see nearby tweets etc. But it’s the unique features that really make iTwitter stand out from the other clients out there.

Where possible, I always like to type in landscape mode as it helps my fat fingers make fewer mistakes, well iTwitter supports this feature, not unique? Well Landscape mode works in every aspect of twitter, so you no longer have to switch from a portrait view when reading your feed to a landscape view when you need to reply.

But what if you need to send a tweet in a hurry? Well launch the app whilst your iPhone (or iPod Touch) is in landscape position and you’re taken straight to the compose screen. I don’t currently know of another app that allows you to go from launch to tweet in less time.

Navigation around the app works nicely too, touching a tweet in your feed will bring up a list of options available (reply, retweet, favorite) along with access to any links from the tweet, e.g pictures, urls or other users on twitter. Another nice touch is to be found in the feed, when you reply to someone (or vice versa) the original tweet is shown attached to the reply, this is a great little feature as you can see exactly which message has been replied to with no need to drill down through a conversation.

By far and large the biggest thing about iTwitter is the support of Push Notifications for mentions and Direct Messages…  BUT and I use capitals as it’s quite a big but this only works when the other person is sending the tweet with iTwitter. Now, don’t be fooled into thinking this is the developers way of making you force you’re friends to buy the app as well, it is simply that at present, Twitter’s API does not allow for full Push support. The feature has suffered a few bugs with Notifications not coming through but the developer has fixed this and they are now working a treat.

Now there are a few niggles to go along with all the good things, a lack of options means you can’t really customize your experience, and it doesn’t always mark tweets as read, meaning you generally have to manually mark all as read before you exit. There is also no access to trending subjects and it doesn’t seem to allow you to block people.

Overall this is a nice app, the overall look is a little sparse at present but the developer is working on updates to add even more functionality to it and improve the overall experience. Whether all this is enough to prise you from your trusted twitter client only time will tell. Since I grabbed this app for review, it has been priced at £2.39, and as good as it is, I just can’t help feeling that it isn’t worth that amount yet!

Current Status: Worth a Look

Reviewed at: v1.0
Reviewed on Firmware: 3.0
Download size: 1.1MB
Released on: 05 July 2009
Retails for: £2.39 / $3.99

Compatible with: iPod touch Gen 1 & 2 / iPhone Classic / iPhone 3G / iPhone 3GS (Requires OS 3.0 or later)