Which is the Best Windows Phone Twitter Client?

This is a personal choice since everyone uses Twitter differently and have different needs in a client. All the apps have their advantages and disadvantage. I have purchased and poked around in most of the major Twitter clients available for Windows Phone 7.

For me, there are a couple of features that are important:

• Live tiles with push notifications
• Ability to retweet with comments
• Ability to customize text size

There are 3 Twitter clients that meet most of my needs out there right now. I am sure some others would suffice, but these are the three I have narrowed it down to. Rowi, Mehdoh, and Carbon. Carbon and Rowi offer threaded Direct Messages too. Not having this feature isn’t a breaking point for me, but I do like threaded conversations. Something I really like about Carbon is the conversation view.

I decided to do a video that showcases all three of these clients showing the basics of their operation to help readers get an idea of the pros and cons of each. The video is 24 minutes long and I just skimmed the surface of each of them. The video was done on an HTC Titan running Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. I was running the most current version (available on the Windows Phone Marketplace) of each of these apps.

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Like I said, I am sure to have missed a killer feature or two for each of the apps, but I wanted to show the basics for the most part.

Here are the Twitter Clients that I have tried so far:

MehDoh — This one is one of the crowd favorites right now. It has live tile support as well as toast notifications. It doesn’t provide an option for multiple accounts though. It does remember where you left off and that’s something earlier Twitter clients couldn’t do. There is no push for the live tiles, but it does go out every 30 minutes and brings back data for the live tiles.

• Price: Free
• My Rating: 8/10

Carbon — Carbon is one of the most anticipated Twitter clients in quite some time. There was some drama when getting the app approved. Either way, it’s here and it works well, offers some great features, but lacks push notifications. This one is tied for 2nd with Mehdoh in my book.

• Price: $1.99 or Free with ads
• My Rating: 8/10

Rowi — Rowi is one of my favorites so far and comes recommended by many of my friends. The push notifications actually work. It’s very fast too. There is a Mango update coming for this one soon.

• Price: $2.99 or Free with ads
• My Rating: 9/10

The Official Twitter App- This one works well, but I find it slow. It’s definitely a far cry from the official apps for Android and iOS. No Live Tile support, no notifications at all that someone has sent you a DM or @ reply.

• Price: FREE
• My Rating: 6/10

MoTweets — MoTweets was a great client on Windows Mobile prior to Windows Phone’s release. Today, the app is still very solid. You can added multiple accounts and it has Facebook support. I purchased the pro version to support the developers before I found that there were so many capable apps available now. The biggest thing I do not like about MoTweets is that you have to keep tapping more to load more tweets. It’s also a little slow to refresh. It is very customization though. The description says that it has live tile support, but it’s not working for me.

• Price: $1.99
• My Rating: 6/10

Seesmic — Seesmic is one of the bigger brand names in Twitter clients. It should be good right? This one is free too. It’s good, offers multiple accounts, and did I mention… free? Seesmic has live tile support as well. The live tiles appear to work, but they don’t always update from what I can see.

• Price: FREE
• My Rating: 7/10

Beezz — This one had a ton of promise, but appears to have no support now. They were supposed to have notifications now, but I haven’t been able to get it to work. This worked fine on my Samsung Focus last fall.

• Price: FREE
• My Rating: 2/10

Birdsong — Live tile and push notifications aren’t working for me with this app. This was a bummer because the customization and speed of this one is great. Bing integration. Multiple Accounts. Low Price. This app is primed to be good, but I just couldn’t get notifications to work.

• Price: $0.99
• My Rating: 7/10

What I would love to see is Twitter to develop an app that is as good on Windows Phone as the official client is on iOS and Android. Twitter would have no issues making a version with all the features and push notifications. The only issue would be retweeting with comments. The browser version even fails to deliver that.

The Verdict is…

Rowi for me. The main reason I choose Rowi is push notifications. If not for the notifications, it would be a 3 way tie. Rowi, Carbon, and Mehdoh are all quality Twitter clients, each with their own killer feature. It would be a toss up for me if they all didn’t have push notifications. I really like Mehdoh and Rowi most though. Carbon is poised to be awesome, but they are the new guys on the block.

Screenshot Gallery

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What do you use on your Windows Phone?