Free Echofon iPhone app boasts speed, video support

You always remember your first love, and Echofon was the first iPhone Twitter app I let into my life. I just needed the basics and Echofon fulfilled my needs. It still does, too, unlike my first love.

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Echofon’s simple, clean design and easy interface makes it a great choice for first-time Twitterers and veteran users.

The Twitter timeline is displayed logically, and Echofon uses a handy color-coding system: blue for new tweets since your last refresh and green for mentions of your screen name. The window for composing tweets has dedicated buttons to include location, links or photos. Plus there’s a built-in followers directory for easy replying and retweeting.

Echofon is also one of the first free Twitter apps to support integration with TwitVid, a nice bonus for you cool cats with the iPhone 3GS.

Options found in the iPhone/iPod Touch settings panel include auto refreshing, and customization of the search page to auto-load trends, search history or nearby users.

Echofon does include a rotating ad banner—hey, it’s free and developers have bills, too—but in my experience it hasn’t affected load time. In fact, Echofon’s speed ranks at the top among Twitter apps I’ve used, even when loading trends or nearby users.

Echofon doesn’t support multiple accounts and requires an upgrade to the iPhone 3.0 software.

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