Review of Maha – A WP7 Influenced Twitter App for the iPhone

We are a big fan of social networking apps here at G Style, especially if they are for social networks we are already on and if the apps are visually appealing. We’ve already looked at a few Twitter apps in the past and for the most part, many of them are visually similar to each other in terms of looks and function. With that said, I came across Maha, a Twitter app that is far different from anything I’ve seen on iOS so far. Where as most Twitter apps try to mimic the look of the official Twitter app, Maha takes a far different approach and instead mimics the look and feel of a WP7 / Zune app.

Is really is a fresh take on a Twitter app on iOS, even though it mimics the user interface style of a different OS. I usually don’t like it when native apps don’t have the look and feel of their corresponding OS, but I really dig the look of Maha. I’ve always been a fan of the Zune user interface and was really interested in picking up a Windows Phone 7, but ultimately the appeal of iOS was just to much for me to pass up. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t mind using an app that has the look and feel of WP7. It’s very different from anything I’ve used so far and you know what? I’m really enjoying it.

Maha is a very fast Twitter app thanks to the UI. You can go from your main timeline, mentions, direct messages, and lists with just a few swipes left or right. Clicking on a tweet brings up another screen with the full tweet and options to reply, retweet, RT with the old method, or mark it as a favorite. From this screen, you can also swipe left or right to bring up the that users profile, timeline, follower and following list, favorites, and lists they’ve made or are on. Again, all of this is very fast and loads up almost instantaneously. The fact that most of the ui is based on swiping makes navigating all the different elements easy and quick. If any button presses are necessary, they are all at the bottom of the screen and are context aware.

Now, as impressed with Maha as I am, there are still a few minor things that I would like to see improved upon, changed, and added before making it my primary Twitter client. First of all, there is no support for native push notifications. This was a problem I also encountered with Tweetbot which also kept it from really ever becoming a primary. Until this is added in, Maha will be used as a secondary backup app for my other Twitter account. A strange problem I had with the app is that on one of my Twitter accounts, I could not follow or unfollow users. I thought it was very strange because on my other account, it was there so I don’t know what was going on with that. I even deleted all the accounts and re-added them and it still did the same thing. On the improvement side, I’d like to see Maha use the “pull down to refresh” method of checking for updates instead of pressing the refresh button down below.

Luckily, Maha seems to be getting a steady stream of updates  from its developer. Hopefully more features will be added and some of its quirks will improved upon. Other than that, Maha has real potential to be a great Twitter app for those who want something different and stylish. It just needs a few more tweaks and the addition of native push notifications to make it one of the top alternatives to the official Twitter app.

Maha is Available now in the App Store for $1.99. It is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later.