Tweetie 2 vs. Echofon (free) – Twitter Apps for iPhone – Guess Which One I Prefer

Tweetie 2 status bar

EchoFon (free edition) status bar

Tweetie 2

…is a highly regarded Twitter client for the iPhone that sells for $2.99. It has a 4.5 (out of 5) star rating with 2106 buyers rating it in the iTunes App Store. After the recent controversy about its developer charging its full price ($2.99) for upgrading from version 1.x to 2 (Apple doesn’t provide an upgrade pricing scheme), I decided to buy a copy and try it out myself.

I’ve been using it for over a week now. And, I was somewhat surprised to find that I prefer the free version of Echofon 2.1.1 to Tweetie so far. FYI: Echofon’s free version has a 3.5 star average rating while its $4.99 ad-less version gets a solid 4 star average rating.

The main reason for my preference for Echofon is its new tweet notification feature. Tweetie unceremoniously positions new tweets above older ones without indicating new tweets are in the “invisible window” above the visible screen area (or so it seems to me). Echofon scrolls the window down a bit and displays new tweets with a blue background leaving older tweets with a white background. Moreover, you can see in the status bar comparison above that Echofon tells you precisely how many new tweets, replies and direct messages have been received since last using the app. Tweetie just places a blue dot beneath the indicator.

I’ll continue playing with Tweetie for a week or two more to see if I missed something. But, I think I will return to Echofon soon.

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