Facebook for Android App Review
I’m sure a lot of readers here user Facebook and are probably disappointed by the lack of decent Facebook client for Android. The official app was finally released around a year ago now but it was extremely basic when compared to its iPhone counterpart – updates have been almost non existant since with the only major addition the ability to read inbox messages. A few weeks ago it was reported that Mark Zuckerberg, one of Facebook’s co-founders had installed Facebook for Android – this was the beginning of much speculation and as if by magic they have now released a much improved version of the app!
The first thing you will notice is that there has been a UI overhall – it is now much easier to navigate, has a number of unread notifications displayed at the bottom that when pressed pops up with your notifications, has friends recently added photos showing across the bottom and most important of all it now has buttons for requests and events. Overall this is a massive improvement over the previous version and has finally got the Android app to something that is usable for people who use Facebook a lot.
The features that were in the previous version of the app are much the same except that now pressing the Facebook logo in the top left will take you back to the home page.
In the options menu there is also no great change from the previous version - you can choose which notifications you receive, enable or disable LED notifications and sync contacts. Syncing contacts allows you to have pictures from your Facebook friends profile picture in your contacts and messaging application. This feature works well but unfortunately Facebook won’t let third party apps use these pictures so apps such as ChompSMS will not display the synced contact pictures which is a little disappointing.
Overall this version of the app is much better than previous versions but there’s still some way to go until people will be satisfied. Something that seems crazy is clicking notifications still takes you to the web version of Facebook which really isn’t acceptable and seems to be either overlooked by Facebook or they’re being lazy and not implementing this commonly overlooked problem which many users comment on. The second main problem is that there is no sign of chat implementation – however with a decent amount of third party apps that allow you to chat with Facebook this is less of an issue. There is also still no video implementation which would seem like an obvious feature to include considering the great capture abilities of most Android phones.
Theres still some way to go yet before this app is what we’d all expect but at least some big progress has been made and we can all look forward to this app improving. The most recent updates has made the app 1.5 compatible which is another nice step forward for those on first gen Android handsets.
Rating: 
Price: FREE
Download this app:
Test version: 1.3.2
Test phone(s): Samsung Galaxy S
Tags: Android, Facebook, Social Networking
I just got a HTC Incredible. I have been having problems getting the notification update. I got new comments on my posts but they were not showing on the Android facebook. Please help.
Hi there, thanks for the comment – you aren’t alone with your problems. My suggestion would be to try uninstalling the application, restarting the phone then reinstalling it – also exclude it from any task killers if you use one.
Hello. I just recently installed this application (took your advice and turned my unit off/on and reinstalled the application). Finally I can read/send status updates. Just a question, will I be able to receive notifications on this particular application?
Glad that worked for you
. Yes you should be able to – be sure that they are enabled. To enable them open up the Facebook app and click your menu button and click settings. Then tick notifications and tick/untick the ones you want to receive notifications about. Now you should be alerted of any new notifications and on the front page of the app it will show the number of new notifications at the bottom. If you have notifications disabled it will still show the number of unread notifications within the app -this is my preference.
Hope this is clear enough.
I just got the new Tmobile mytouch slide and I have the facebook app but i am not getting notifications or the icon showing i have a notification. I have to open the app to then see my notifications. how can i get it fixed
Saddly, I don’t think there is a way to upload video with the Facebook app for Android. You can upload pictures directly, create new folders, etc but no video options. That sucks.
@Scott: good point, I will comment on this when the review gets updated shortly
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@Laura: Have you got them enabled? (probably a stupid question but you never know). On the homepage of Facebook for Android click Menu> Settings> tick notifications and tick the ones you want.
If you have and it still isn’t working do you have any task killers installed? If so make sure you have Facebook excluded from the kill list.
Thirdly, if that doesn’t work totally uninstall Facebook for Android, restart the phone and then re-install. Let me know if anything helped
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It would be great if you could delte friend with the FB for Android app.
Whilst I think it would be a nice feature there’s definitely more important things they need to sort out first, such as the notifications taking you to the mobile website still.