In the showcase section of Windows Marketplace for Mobile I noticed a “new” Twitter client for Windows Phones called TouchTwit. I was looking for a new fast Twitter client for use on the HTC HD2, that would take more advantage of the Qualcomm 1GHz Snapdragon and the massive 4.1″ capacitive screen.

Based on the positive feedback from users in the Windows Marketplace for Mobile, I decided to buy TouchTwit from the Windows Marketplace for Mobile for the reasonable price of € 1,89 !

First launch of TouchTwit on HTC HD2

If you don’t mind I will skipp the purchasing process part from Windows Marketplace for Mobile, since this is very simple and intuitive to do. Even the setup and configuration of your payment credentials is easy to do from your Windows Phone or Windows PC.

TouchtTwit is based on the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 3.5, which is additionally installed on your Windows Phone. On the TouchTwit website you can read back the additional system requirements. In the left screenshot above you see the very cool and well designed TouchTwit program icon in the start menu of the Windows Mobile 6.5 powered HTC HD2.

At the first launch of TouchTwit you will see an information screen with a disclaimer and the reminder of possible data charges, which is shown in the left screenshot above. Perhaps it is the German accuracy, but I think it is good to inform your end-users about this (although it won’t be much of a surprise). Click the left softkey, OK, to continue witch the TouchTwit configuration.

The next step in order to use TouchTwit is adding your account credentials or the creation of a new account. In the right screenshot above you can see both these options. In addition you can see that I have added both my personal remoknops account, and the mobilityminded account. Yes, one of the unique features is that TouchTwit manages multiple Twitter accounts easily from your Windows Phone.

In order to continue with the step-by-step application overview Iselect my personal remoknops twitter account and will be redirected to the home-tab of the TouchTwit application.

TouchTwit – A step-by-step application overview

In this section of the article I will provide a step-by-step overview of the TouchTwit application. As you can see in the screenshots above there is a static navigation toolbar with five tabs/buttons on the bottom of the screen: (1) Home, (2) Mentions, (3) Messages, (4) More, and (5) Update.

Home

In the left screenshot above you see an example screenshot of how the “homelist” looks like. At first you see a wide dark titlebar that marks the top of the list and provides information about: (1)  the selected account with help of the title “remoknop’s timeline” and the sync status.  In the bottom line of the bar you can see the timestamp of the next automatic refresh and more important you see a big round synchronization button (with blue arrows) right next to it for manual synchronization.

Furthermore you see the line: “Friends, Mentions & Messages” which gives you information about which types of tweets are showing up in the homelist feed. Via the more tab, which I will discuss later in this section, you can change the home(list) settings, that are shown in the right screenshot above. You can choose to uncheck the mentions or direct messages to show up in the home(list) feed. If you uncheck on of these options, the line in the wide dark titlebar is changed as well. Finally you see the option to search through your homelist feed as well.

If you switch back to the left screenshot above you see that the complete Twitter messages are shown in a clean well designed look. The lack of showing the complete tweet in Twikini, has been one of my main drivers for the search to an alternative Twitter client. Clicking on a link in TouchTwit directly opens this link in the default Opera Mobile browser from the HTC HD2.  A Twitpic link that is included in a tweet will be opened internally in the TouchTwit application !

The wide dark title bar marks the top of the home(list) twitter feed, where the top means the most recent tweets. This titlebar isn’t static, and will move away when you scroll down to older tweets. The bottom of the home(list) feed is marked with wide dark more button, similar to the implementation of the Twitter experience in a webbrowser on your Windows PC. By clicking on the more button you can extend the home(list) feed with the next set of older tweets. A screenshot with the more button is shown in the left screenshot below.

Mentions

The second tab/button in the navigation bar on the bottom of the screen is called mentions. Again you can see the wide dark titlebar in the mentions screen as well. The main difference with the home(list) twitter feed, the mentions feed has a light blue background ! The right screenshot above gives an impression of the mentions overview.

(Direct) Messages

The next tab/button in the navigation bar covers another main ingredient of most Twitter clients, (direct) messages. In the left screenshot above you see an overview of the direct messages tab with the remarkable light orange background. Furthermore is the wide dark titlebar here implemented as well.

The home(list) feed, mentions, and direct messages, are the main ingredienst which we can see in most Twitter clients for Windows PC and Windows Mobile.

More

The more tab/button in the navigation bar of the TouchTwit application for Windows Phone includes a few unique features in comparison with other Twitter clients for Windows Mobile. The three screenshots above give you an idea of the different options which are part of the more tab.

At first you have the possibility to check a few additional account details on your Windows Phone:  (1) Favorites, (2) Followers, (3) Following. In the TweetDeck twitter client on my Windows 7 notebook I have a separate column for the favorite tweets, as a kind of reminder/note to check them later, because they link to interesting content.

Second, under the tweets-heading within the more tab of the navigation bar, you can create or select a picture or video you want to share on Twitter. While these aren’t unique features it is helpful to be able to share multimedia both from the more and the update-tabs in the navigation bar.

Remarkable however is that these features are integrated with two services, Twitpic and Twitvid. I hope that in future versions of the TouchTwit application the integration with other services will be added, or the end-user will get the possibility to choose his preferred service to share multimedia. For example you like MobiPicture more than Twitpic and want to use this service as default.

Third you can see a search heading within the more tab of the navigation bar. You can not only search for tweets and users from this screen, but it is also possible to search for current-, daily-, and weekly trending topics. This Twitter Trends implementation on a Windows Phone is unique as far as I know.

The fourth and final heading within the more tab of the TouchTwit application is called advanced. Here you can change the settings of the home(list) feed which is discussed in a previous section, or you can switch accounts -in the scenario where you use multiple accounts-, read the about details of the TouchTwit application for Windows Phones or finally exit the application.

Update

“Update” is the final tab/button in the navigation bar of the TouchTwit application, and not surprisingly this tab is used to compose messages. In the top of this screen you can see six buttons: (1) @reply, (2) short URL, (3) Location, (4) Media, (5) Cancel, and (6) Update. The screenshots above give you an impression of composing a tweet within TouchTwit on the HTC HD2.

By tapping on the @reply button you can select friends you follow and want to address from an alphabetiacal ordered list. The function of the short URL button is obvious, however with the small remark that the included full link needs to start with http:// so it doesn’t shorten when the URL is started with www. Furthermore the used shortening service is TinyURL and just like the integration with multimedia services Twitpic and Twitvid, choice for other default services would be a great improvement.

Adding pictures and location is also possible with the fingerfriendly buttons in the update screen. With the update button you can publish the tweet to your twitterfeed. Remarkable is that you can’t select or creat video’s from the update tab (just from the more tab).

The screenshots above show you the exceptional clean looks of the interface. However the right screenshot above shows you the unfolded full qwerty softkeyboard on the HTC HD2. You can see the light grey “cutouts” on the usual position of the softkeys, and I personal think that this would be a visual point of improvement (it doesn’t affect function) !!

Settings, new favourite, retweet & other functions

In this additional section I woul like to address a few main functions of the TouchTwit application for Windows Phone.

The left screenshot above shows you an overview of the settings, which can be changed via the advanced heading in the more tab of the navigation bar. For example you can change synchonisation interval, and honestly 2 minutes is a really short interval that hasn’t my personal preference (from a batterylife perspective).

However you can also change settings like the fontsize, notifications and sounds, or the scroll speed. This is something I wanted to highlight, the navigation and scroll experience in TouchTwit is blazing fast !! I would like you all to put this on top of your list with pro’s to justify a purchasing decision.

In the application overview I didn’t address how to reply, retweet or favorite tweet directly from the home(list) twitter feed. The developers of TouchTwit have come up with a really nice, easy to use implementation. You simply make a swipe gesture from right to left on a specific tweet, that results in a new tweet screen lik is shown in the right screenshot above.

As you can see I can easily favorite the tweet, retweet the particular message or simply reply to the user @gervercom via @reply. If you are engaged in a conversation you can also view this conversation in a sort of chat-mode ! Overall the implementation with swipes and gestures works really well, and foremost fast. Finally you can also copy a tweet and past it into an e-mail for example.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBidqUG2R2g

Final thoughts and overall conclusion

In order to summarize you could have a look at the video above with a demonstration of the TouchTwit application.

Some time a go I have looked at Twikini, a nice Twitter application for Windows Phone, and its features. While I still like Twikini for use on the HTC Snap, I was looking for a different and slightly more stable Twiter client for the HTC HD2. I can assure you that TouchTwit works very solid and lightning fast on the HTC HD2.

“It’s easy to view your timeline, messages, replies and favorites. TouchTwit has a Powerful Tweet-update screen that lets you write Tweets, upload photos and videos, short url’s and include your GPS coordinates. And TouchTwit is always finger-friendly!“

Like you can read in the product description on the TouchTwit website, this application is 100% optimized for touch control. I woudl furthermore like to compliment the designer who did a great job of implementing a clean, professional look for the TouchTwit application.

Also some advance features like the trending topics, chat view of the conversation and the possibility to manage multiple account justify the purchasing decision for TouchTwit. The reasonable price of € 1,89 can’t be a real deal breaker, certainly if you look what amount of functional value you get for this price.  You can’t go wrong with TouchTwit …