ChillTwit iPhone Application Review
A few days ago I downloaded the ChillTwit and decided to use it solely as my Twitter iPhone application. I wanted to see if it held up next to my current free iPhone Twitter applications, TweetDeck and duo.
It seems to me the main advantage that ChillTwit has over its competition is it allows you to customize your bubble colors, and background image. This, in my opinion is nice, at least the bubble colors are. The bubbles are nice because they help you see the difference between each tweet on whatever obnoxious background you decide to choose.
Features:
- View Timeline of the users you are following!
- View messages, and replies
- View links in ‘Inline Browser’
- Post tweets from iPhone or iPod Touch
- Post images to Twitter w/ camera or via/ Photos using Twitpic!
- Reply to any tweet or message!
- Background customization to any photo!
- Bubble color customization from 9 colors to choose from!
- Retweet a Twitter message
- Ad- Free
- Easy Twitter Account Setup
- Smooth scrolling of Tweets
So how does it hold up next to my other two free Twitter iPhone applications TweetDeck and duo?
My first complaint is the refresh rate. As far as I can tell you have to tap the refresh button in the top left corner to see your new tweets, which can be irritating if your having a short conversation with someone.
It is very stable, meaning it doesn’t crash on me every few tweets or so like TweetDeck. Which is a huge plus for ChillTwit. In fact in the few days of use, ChillTwit hasn’t crashed once. I’m not the biggest Twitter user in the world, in fact, I rarely tweet anything. I use Twitter to stalk other, to eavesdrop on others. So when watching others it can be very irritating when the program crashes.
Because of the TweetDeck crashing I’ve been using duo to post things, when things need to be posted. But with duo I can’t read other peoples comments, it’s more of a one way street, I talk but can’t listen. A big plus of duo is I can post to both Twitter and Facebook at the same time. Unfortunately I can post to Facebook with ChillTwit, but thinking about it, I don’t see how it would work anyway.
One final drawback I have found with ChillTwit is the inability to create groups. With TweetDeck you can group the people you are following into different sections. Which is nice when you follow different topics or groups of people. Hopefully ChillTwit will add this functionality in the near future.
As a Twitter application, ChillTwit has been great so far. It’s free, as of now, it’s fast and it’s stable. ChillTwit has a few extra features that sets it apart from other Twitter applications like changing the bubble colors and background image. Just because of these few small extras, and the free price tag, I can foresee myself using ChillTwit until the next big fad comes along and takes my time away from my family like Twitter has.
Popularity: 1% [?]
IMO, Tweetie is still by far the best iPhone Twitter app out there. If you tweet with any kind of frequency, it’s well worth the $2.99. It hasn’t crashed on me in months (unlike TweetDreck, which is completely unusable) and it has most features you’d want. The link to learn more is http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-iphone/
I use EchoFon and have pretty happy with it. They have a free and paid version. It makes it really easy to Retweet, Direct Message, and keeps track of your timeline and anyone who mentions you.
Check it!
I’ve found another problem with the ChillTwit iPhone application, there is no way to star a message.
I use my iPhone to check Twitter when I’m away from my computer, like most people with iPhones. But I dont always want to read the posts linked in the twitter feed, I like to flag them for later use when at a computer.
Hopefully ChillTwit will add this in an upcoming version, or I may just have to spend the $2.99 on Tweetie.
ChillTwit is still fun to use, but without the ability to star messages, it’s quickly becoming more unproductive for power users.
Tweetie version 2 just came out today.