Twitter and the iPhone are a match made in heaven. My Twitter client is one of the three most used applications on my iPhone (the other two being Phone and Mail), and I actually think I use it more than Phone.

Today, I review four Twitter clients for the iPhone: Tweetie, Twinkle, TwitterFon and Twitterrific.

Grading Criteria

I reviewed and graded each client (except Twinkle, but more on that later) according to two sets of criteria. The first set is the set of features commonly found in Twitter clients, such as deleting tweets or following new people.

The other set is my own, personal gripes with most Twitter clients, and all iPhone apps in general. This set includes criteria like being able to determine my location correctly, using the correct date/time format according to my locale, and scrolling speed.

Tweetie

Tweetie is a relatively new contender in the iPhone Twitter client arena, but it has an almost fanatic following (including John Gruber), making it the second most popular paid social networking app in the App Store (as of this writing).

I had some major gripes with Tweetie 1.1, and most seem to have been resolved with 1.2, but two important issues remain:

1. Tweetie cannot determine my location correctly

   Well, actually it can, but for some reason it doesn’t translate my location to a city name, and just sets my location to “iPhone: <latitude>, <longitude>.” As it turns out, and much to my surprise, the only Twitter client capable of determining my location correctly is Twitterrific.

2. Tweetie doesn’t use the correct date/time format. (See update)

   Tweetie is the only Twitter client I’ve tried that doesn’t use relative times. Instead, it displays absolute times, and unfortunately, it fails to display these in the correct format. The previous version displayed all date/time information using the US locale, and 1.2 is even worse: the day names are in Turkish, but it still uses the US format (e.g. Pzt 7/28 4:20 PM).

   I can’t say this is a showstopper, but proper localization is key to a successful Mac application, and iPhone applications are Mac applications. Attention to small details is what makes us Mac users, and I got a news flash for Tweetie developers (and all other developers who don’t care about proper localization): there’s life outside the US, and we don’t use a 12-hour clock or write the month before the day. You should have fixed these before the 1.0 release, but you’re already at 1.2 and localization still sucks.

Grade: 8/10

Twinkle

Twinkle is one of the first Twitter clients on the iPhone. It was available before the App Store (and the SDK), so I used it for quite some time, and I was very happy with it.

After the SDK and the App Store revolution, I installed Twitterific and didn’t try the new Twinkle until this review. Well, actually I still haven’t tried it.

The new (post-SDK) Twinkle requires you to sign up for a Tapulous account. This is apparently because Tapulous is trying to build a FriendFeed-like network, and therefore Twinkle is somehow “part of a bigger plan.” Twinkle developer Tristian O’Tierney explains:

What many people want is just a Twitter client, and I’m sorry to say as a basic design decision, that’s just not what Twinkle is or is meant to be.

Well, I’m one of those many people, and as much as I like Tap Tap Revenge, I’m not signing up for yet another account just be able to post and read 140-character messages. No thanks.

I really wanted to know how Twinkle held up against the competition (and I still do), but apparently Twinkle is not just a Twitter client anymore, and is therefore disqualified.

Grade: 0/10

TwitterFon

I tried TwitterFon after a recommendation by a friend, and I honestly didn’t think I’d like it this much. It has all the features (with the exception of multiple accounts) one could wish for in a Twitter client, and it’s free.

I can say that Tweetie has a slightly better-looking UI, but TwitterFon uses relative times, and therefore doesn’t suffer from improper localization. For all I can say, TwitterFon is at least as good a Twitter client as Tweetie.

Grade: 8/10

Twitterrific

Twitterrific is the Twitter client for the Mac, and I’ve used it intermittently since its debut.

I downloaded the iPhone version the day it was released, and I was surprised to see how different (in a bad way) it is from the desktop version.

All lacking features aside, Twitterrific for the iPhone has the worst user experience among the four clients I’ve reviewed, and scrolling is excruciatingly slow. This may be partly due to the ads, and there’s an ad-free premium version for $9.99, but that’s the only difference between the two versions, and I think $9.99 is a ridiculous price to pay for a Twitter client, especially one that lacks critical features and has a mediocre user experience.

Special question to the Twitterrific team: how high were you when you decided to use “double tapping?” Thanks.

Grade: 4/10

Feature Matrix

	Tweetie	TwitterFon	Twitterrific
Multiple Accounts	✓	✗	✗
Delete	✓	✓	✗
Follow	✓	✓	✗
Search	✓	✓	✗
Favorites	✓	✓	✓
@Replies	✓	✓	✓
Direct Messages	✓	✓	✓
Re-tweeting	✓	✓	✗
Correct Location	✗	✗	✓
Ad-free	✓	✓	✗
Intuitive UI	✓	✓	✗
Scrolling	Fast	Fast	Slow
Price	$2.99	Free	Free

Conclusion

There’s a tie between Tweetie and TwitterFon. They’re both good Twitter clients, but there’s always room for improvement: TwitterFon could use a bit more polish, and Tweetie developers have to fix the localization problems.

If you’re American or you just don’t care about the small details (ie. you use Windows), please go ahead and buy Tweetie. You’ll be supporting an indie developer ($2.99 is not much, in all probability you paid more for your lunch today).

On the other hand, if you just want a good, free Twitter client, and don’t have multiple Twitter accounts, use TwitterFon.

As for me, I’m currently using Tweetie, and I hope the localization problems will be gone with the next release. If they aren’t, then I’m switching to TwitterFon for good.

UPDATE (Feb. 4): I got an email from Loren Brichter, the guy behind Tweetie, the day I published this post, and he wanted to know more about the localization issues. We discussed (well, most of it was me ranting) the issues at length, and he said he will try and fix them in 1.3.

I would like to thank Loren again for the quick response and consideration.