Another day, another Twitter app for the iPhone. There are plenty of them out there, but Tweetings was recommended to me by @ShobizzNess, a great reader and commenter here, so I thought I ‘d give it a look.
I ‘ve been using Tweetings, alongside my favorite Twitter app (Tweetie) for quite a few days now “ and of course I ‘ve got a few thoughts about it by now. Hit the jump for those thoughts and lots of screencaps.
*** A quick note on the version being reviewed here. Tweetings has just released a new 2.1.2 version today. I ‘ve installed it but really not used it much, so this review is of the previous version of the app. Having said that, I ‘ve looked at what ‘s new in version 2.1.2 (several new features and some bug fixes) and there ‘s nothing there that would change my current thinking on the app.
The Short Story
Tweetings is quite a capable Twitter app, with plenty of features “ it lets me do everything I typically need to do in a Twitter app and more. One of its notable features is support for Twitter Lists.
The big letdown with this app for me is its interface. The UI is far too busy for my liking, so ultimately I don ‘t enjoy using the app.
The Slightly Longer Story
One thing I should mention in this app ‘s favor is that although I saw many complaints in App Store reviews about crashes and instability, I have not seen any of that while using it. It ‘s been solid the whole time.
In addition to offering a good range of features, Tweetings also gives you a good range of settings choices, including things like font size and retweeting style “ both nice touches.
Tweetings does push notifications, but does them very poorly. It is consistently slower than Boxcar in showing me push alerts for starters. Worse though is that it always shows me my cumulative totals of mentions and DMs, rather than the latest incoming one of those “ which strikes me as entirely useless information.
Similarly, it shows an unread count badge on the main, mentions, and DM timelines within the app. Again, I couldn ‘t care less about seeing these numbers and often forget to tap the check mark button to tell the app yes I ‘ve seen all these. The badge for the main timeline can be turned off via Settings, but I still much prefer Tweetie ‘s more subtle approach to showing you have new mentions and DMs.
The app ‘s inline browser offers these options: post a link and read it later. No email option. A big miss there I think.
The worst failing of the app for me is its UI though. It is just far too busy and crowded nearly everywhere you go within it.
An individual tweet ‘s screen is way too busy
So you lose focus on the tweet itslef “ and might miss a Big Ass Twitter Happy Hour, or a good iPad jokes roundup 🙂
Just as one small example of excess on the app ‘s screens, we have a link within the text of a tweet and then also a separate button bar for the link. Why?
User profile pages are also overcrowded
For me just about every screen has too many things on it. Apps like Tweetie and Twitterrific do much more with less.
Tweetings is a plenty capable app, but for me the UI is a dealbreaker. If you don ‘t mind the busy interface, or even prefer it, then this may well be a good Twitter client option for you on the iPhone. It ‘s not a keeper for me though.
You can find Tweetings in the App Store now, priced at $1.99.
*** This app was independently purchased by the post author in the iPhone App Store. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.
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TAGS: iphone apps, iPhone Twitter apps, iPhone Twitter clients
