Twitterfon Pro

This application connects to your twitter account. It has functionality and features which should fulfill your every twitter dream. This new version of Twitterfon Pro comes after they 'upgraded' the free Twitterfon app. (and I tell ya, it's a good thing I'm not reviewing that one cause I preferred the previous version of their free app) Having said that, in a way it was a smart move. It has prompted folks to buy their app.

Twitterfon Pro really is a pro. New and exciting features introduced from adding support for multiple accounts, colored themes, landscape keyboard, shake to refresh, conversation style DMs and a slightly added-to interface which makes for better usability.

Soooo the juicy bits.... sit down and enjoy the ride.

The icon, this icon is brilliant on the iPhone. It now has a place on my dock and it belongs there, it's almost smiling at me. Anyone who knows me or reads my reviews, knows that this is a real clincher for me, I need a sexy icon and this certainly fits the bill. When you launch the app there are some settings that you can modify but first enter in your twitter account details.

MODIFICATIONS Some of the modifications include: Autoload, you can select from / or all Friends Timeline, Mentions and Direct Messages. Theme choices are Plain, Twitterfon, Silver or Black. These themes are pretty stylish and I can't decide between them at all! These load so that when the tweets are new it is a slightly different colour so you can clearly see what you have / have not read.

Additionally you can enter in your bit.ly credentials, add bookmarklet to safari, and there's a link to help topics, so, how to get a Twitter account, forgetting your password or open the Twitter help page.

ACCOUNTS When you are happy with your settings, you can add more accounts. This is a great new feature for Twitterfon and may have been a factor in some folks choosing alternative Twitter apps. The way it accesses these additional accounts is simple, you just click the very top of the 'friends' time line and it returns to that initial screen. Really great to have that feature there yet also out of the way.

INTERFACE Once in the app itself, you have the same interface as before which is neat and tidy. Along the bottom is the icons for friends timeline, mentions and DMs as well as favorites and search. All of these have the wonderful red notification icons when there are new tweets. This particular feature is what has always kept me coming back to this app. I love being able to see if there are any messages, and can just glance at it if I'm busy.
The top bar has a refresh icon (but you don't really need to use this often) and then the posting a tweet icon on the right.

TWEETING Clicking that icon opens the area to enter your 140 character Tweet. While you are typing it counts down the number of characters for you (essential) and the number turns red and negative if you go over that amount. You can also bin/garbage the message if it's not what you want to send by selecting the little trash can.

There is the location compass if you want to attach your location to your tweet and the camera, if you want to include a picture from your pictures or to take a new one. If you are taking a photo, it will ask you to confirm that you want the picture you took or if you would like to re-take it. Lastly on that screen of importance is the friend icon on the lower right. This is your list of friends. I haven't used this feature much actually, but when testing this ability I thought it is a great thing to be able to do, just scroll through really quickly to who you want to tweet.

Unfortunately when testing this feature (twice) it had a message of "Getting your friends list..." but I waited for several minutes and gave up. It didn't let me cancel and took along time for it to respond.

The Direct Messages are in conversation style which I love. For me this is such a big selling point and is one feature that always made me go back to Twitterfon over other apps. It is great to see a conversation rather than tweets received and tweets sent.

The search feature enables you to save your searches if you want to which can be great and it loads up really easy. Also it refreshes with the notifications icons on the bottom so you can go check your tweets and then go back to your searches.

MORE Additional things that I'd like to add but this is turning into the hardback version is Twitter Trends, Quick Add/Remove Favorites; which is a star you can click that is on each tweet (really handy!), user lookup, Ticker Symbol for StockTwits, Landscape Keyboard, Shake to Reload (nice touch), Instapaper Integration and no ads.

THE DARKSIDE A few negative points are that it has crashed a few times. Keep in mind I do have it opened a long time and maybe it was just that. It only closed the app and nothing was lost or changed so it wasn't a big issue. Also, I'm not convinced by the little notifications in the DM view which hey have added to this version. It puts a little grey oval next to the persons name but there really is no need to. Maybe it will grow on me.

Lastly, sometimes when writing a message, the message you're writing seems to be slightly below the writing area, this slightly leaves your text down a bit and can be frustrating to fix typos etc or read it clearly. (I'm picky - what can I say?)

OVERALL This is pretty much everything I need in my Twitter app. Its been a long journey on the quest of perfection but I think I may now delete all other applications (well not really but thinking of it). If they could add a cute notification noise I think I would be in Twheaven (too much?).