Twitterlator Pro – Review
I was lucky enough to grab a promo-code to Twitterlator Pro today ( Thanks @twitterlator ), and gave it a run through to see how it stacked up with my general Twitter usage.
I’m far from a power user, in fact since registering with Twitter.com on Oct 21, 2008 I only have a little over 900 updates, far from some of those that are considerably more tweet heavy but more than the lesser tweeting individuals, like the individual that convinced me to join twitter.
Since joining Twitter, I’ve gone from using the web interface, to using a few desktop clients to now using ( mainly ) my iPhone. I’ve used a few iPhone clients so far, TweetDeck, Twitterfon and now Twitterlator Pro.
After downloading and installing Twitterlator you’ll find a egg like icon on your home screen, and launching the app gives you a similar view:
After you have entered your account information your “friends” feed will begin to load. This is something I have found to be very fast and efficient with Twitterlator over other Twitter applications. It seems to load the new tweets 1.5x or so faster than some of it’s competition.
You get to see your tweets along with anyone that you are following. Tweets that have links with show a little paperclip type icon ( which I didn’t find to be all that intuitive initially ) that if you click on will open up in an embedded browser. You are then presented with options to open the link in Safari, email the link, copy the link, open any link, go back, or cancel:
Clicking on someones tweet gives you options from re-tweeting & replying, to private messaging ( DM ), copying, emailing or favoriting the tweet:
From any of the 3 messaging screens ( friends, mentions and messages ) you can create a new tweet by tapping the icon in the top right corner, and if you tap the cancel button you are asked if you are presented with options that let you save the tweet for later sending.
What I like most about Twitterlator Pro is the speed. On my wireless network at home with my 3GS, it takes about 1 second of showing the egg icon, 1 second of loading and then I’m off and reading my new tweets with my friend icons slowly loading if they haven’t already been cached. Comparing that with TweetDeck, it’s about 2 seconds faster. What I would like to see in a future version of Twitterlator is the ability to swipe left or right and move the next or previous screen ( mentions, messages, etc ). TweetDeck has this option and it’s quite handy, especially since a great portion of the iPhone interface has taught us to swipe.
Twitterlator Pro also has a TON of options to configure if you so desire, though it is VERY usable right out of the box with no customization:
With all that said, I am VERY pleased with Twitterlator and will be using it for my day to day tweets while away from a desktop computer, and I’d recommend anyone with an iPhone and wanting a Twitter client to consider getting Twitterlator Pro.