If you ‘re a Twitter user you likely already know that there are a huge number of iPhone Twitter apps available, and a lot of good strong choices amongst them. SimplyTweet is a relatively new, and very strong, contender in this tough category.
It is one of the very few Twitter clients that offers built-in push notifications, and possibly the only real full-featured Twitter client that does so.
Before I get into the actual review here, I have to say that I keep trying lately to reduce my numbers of apps that all do the same thing “ and Twitter apps is one of the biggest areas of concern for me, as I ‘ve currently got 6 of them that are either straight-up Twitter clients or apps that add some functions not yet found in the full clients.
I mention this only because I went into my reviewing of SimplyTweet feeling pretty sure that it wouldn ‘t survive on my home screen after I was done with the review. It will though, for a couple of reasons that I ‘ll mention below.
What Does It Do?
SimplyTweet is a “ very “ full-featured Twitter client. So it does more or less all the common things you want an iPhone Twitter client to do. Here ‘s just a partial list of features, taken from its App Store description:
- Push notification support for Direct Messages and Mentions, showing new messages count in the application badge
- Themes
- Browse conversations “ display the reply chain of a message all in 1 screen
- Saved views (create groups of friends etc)
- Saved notes for accounts
- Multiple accounts support
- HootSuite integration: importing of Twitter accounts from HootSuite
- Swipe-to-reveal shortcuts
- Saved searches
- Proximity search
- Photos search
- Favorites support
- Trends support
- Unread counts display
- Landscape drafting mode
- Tweetshrink support
- Follow and unfollow users
- Built-in web browser (including landscape mode browsing)
- Instapaper support
- Posterous support (multiple photos with hashtags converted to tags, and support for long tweets)
- Support for Twitpic, yfrog, and img.ly for images posting
- Built-in photo viewer
- Block / unblock support
More features than you can shake a stick at, or even get round to using in my case. It ‘s nice to know all these are there, but I have to say I only use a relatively small portion of them.
Here ‘s one of the fun things about reviewing Twitter apps, or just Twitter in general: in one screencap, that only shows four tweets, we ‘ve got references to politics, nuclear subs, an iPhone game price drop, and hot beer and cold women (huh?) 🙂
What Does It Do Well?
Most things you want a Twitter app to do, with built-in push notifications thrown in, so that you do not have to pay for another app (like Boxcar or TweetPush) just to get those handled.
It loads its timelines quickly, and seems to do a fine job on delivering its push notifications as well. I tested for a couple days using both SimplyTweet and the Prowl app on the iPhone, which pumped notifications from my desktop Tweetie app. I ‘ve also tried out using each of them with the other turned off. SimplyTweet is consistently much faster at getting them through.
It offers five themes to choose from. I like the ‘Sunny ‘ theme best of the choices given, but honestly I don ‘t find any of them really compelling.
Again, it ‘s just a very full-featured Twitter client, with more than enough features to cover most of your common tasks and lots of not so common tasks. Just as one quick example, I like the ability to search by proximity, though I hardly ever make use of it.
SimplyTweet has also been pretty much rock solid in my usage of it. No crashes, no freeze-ups or lag in it at all.
What ‘s Not So Good?
My only complaints about the app are relatively small ones. It offers such a wealth of features, but some of them are “ in my view “ just not as nicely done in others apps. For instance, it offers Saved Views, which is a sort of an equivalent to Groups in TweetDeck.
Although I like having this feature available, its usefulness is limited because in order to see tweets for one of these groups, I need to go to More, then select the individual group.
Or I can edit the More area and choose to add a group to the bottom bar “ but of course this is not a very viable solution as the bottom bar is limited to just 5 buttons. So if I have, say, four groups I ‘m interested in following, I ‘d have to sacrifice shwoing Mentions or DMs on the bottom bar. Basically, TweetDeck has the slickest implementation of groups, with its use of rapidly scrollable columns.
Another example is that the app lets you add notes to a Twitter user ‘s profile, another feature I quite like “ but the way this is implemented is not elegant. Once you ‘ve added a note, to see it again, you have to go to More / Notes, and select the user you want to look at. This feature is implemented far more effectively in Twitterrific.
I ‘m also not a fan of apps that have their settings split between in-app and via the Settings application, as SimplyTweet does.
Overall
As I ‘ve already mentioned, I like SimplyTweet enough to keep it around, even though I am trying to consolidate my Twitter apps on the iPhone. I think it is a very good option for anyone seeking a full-featured Twitter client, and probably the best option going if you want that and built-in push.
As with many types of apps, the ‘best ‘ Twitter app choice is all about which elements are most important to you as an individual user, and which work best with your own ways of using Twitter. For me SimplyTweet is another very impressive Twitter app amongst a strong and crowded field. It has not displaced Twitterrific and Tweetie, which are still my joint favorites in this category, but neither of them offers built-in push “ so I am very happy to keep SimplyTweet around to provide push for me, and to see how it develops.
You can find SimplyTweet in the App Store HERE, priced at $4.99. There is also a Lite (free) version with limited features.
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TAGS: iPhone social networking apps, iPhone Twitter apps, iPhone Twitter clients, SimplyTweet
