Twinkle is a new Twitter client that was made especially for the iPhone. In full disclosure, I haven’t played much with other native twitter applications on the iPhone, instead opting to keep mine pristine and just use web based clients. Those clients (PocketTweets, Thincloud, even the mobile version of Twitter) are fine, but Twinkle well, it really shines.

Twinkle, available from Polar Bear Farm, does just about everything you’d expect from your Twitter client (with a couple of exceptions which I will cover in a bit).

Here is what I love about Twinkle:

It is fast! I also love that it will auto update. I don’t need to reload to see new tweets as the client takes care of it for me. Twinkle is also very intuitive to use, and navigating the menus and options is a snap. It took me all of 2 minutes to figure out how to do just about everything in the application.

On the topic of its ease of use, Twinkle has a really nice UI. It just looks professional. Some of the Twitter clients I have used (web based) on the iPhone just look thrown together.

Twinkle goes beyond other Twitter applications by adding in some of the iPhone’s features, like its ability to triangulate your location with cellphone towers and take photos with the iPhone’s built-in camera. So, when I am using Twinkle I can specify to see tweets from just those Twitter users who are close to me. Currently that is a small number as I am in Phoenix and Twinkle is a relatively new application. However, I have seen other people show up on this list, twittering away on their iPhones at bars or sporting events. Twinkle also uses the iPhone camera to allow you to attach pictures to your tweets.

A few of the problems I have with Twinkle are going to be addressed in the next version of the application. Currently, you can’t click on links inside a tweet to visit urls. You also can’t follow people through the client directly, so for the time being if I see someone i’d like to add to my friends list I need to do it through SMS (or some other web based twitter client). It also appears that pictures taken from the iPhone camera won’t be displayed for people not using Twinkle. It’d be nice if they did (obviously).

In summary, if you use an iPhone and are a Twitter person AND don’t mind jailbreaking your phone then you need to give Twinkle a try. The process of jailbreak is incredibly simple and took me around 45 seconds. It is literally clicking 1 button on a free application you can download.