This is the review of the newest update of Facebook app for android. Facebook for android is an official app developed by the facebook development team and is available for free in the android market.
The app from the official source is always expected to be the best one. But here the case is different. The newest update actually made the app a disabled one. Many of the sections that worked fine previously in the 1.5.x version went completely rogue on the latest version
Home screen in facebook for android is almost similar to the one in previous edition. Home screen provides access to the 9 sections and provide you with a scroll of graphics (photos and videos ) in your news feed.
NEWS FEED
The interesting addition to the news feed section is the ability to upload videos . Uploading videos is done by clicking the camera icon on the second line. The top right button on the news feed screen now lets you select the type of information you want to be displayed on the screen. All of these were good intentions but a crappy code for the implementation of the functionality drove the facebook app to a ditch.
News feed now refreshes constantly every 2 or so seconds if we select anything other than videos and in the latter case nothing loads at all.
UPDATE: News feed is now working fine but videos are still in dark. The news feed is equipped with continuous scrolling which is kinda good because it loads additional items automatically when you near the end of list.
UPDATE 2 : App crashes many a times when trying to download the news feed. The newest update of 1.6.1 also didn't fix this.
CHAT
Chat is the worst part of the new update. Most of the time the chat keeps on loading like forever and finally will say "none of your friends are available to chat" or connection terminated. The no friend thing was always false when I cross checked on my desktop browser.
Another bug in the chat function is the reappearance of active conversations even after I closed it long time ago. I had three conversations currently in that section one of which actually ended 2 weeks ago ( on the previous version) and I have been trying to close it since then.
There was only one successful chat after the current update and this too had many glitches. Posts will appear to be published for sometime and then will vanish mysteriously, without the person at the other end ever seeing it.
One 'dangerous' bug in the program is the swap of the posts. ie, posts intended for one person went to another. This happened to me only once but could have created potentially serious complications so I decided not to use chat until an update is available.
UPDATE: The newest update 1.6.1 resolved most of the previous problems but created new ones. Some times when I am chatting with another person, what I write come in chat screen and what he replies will come in messages section.
FRIENDS REQUEST
In the previous edition, confirming a friend request gave an acknowledgment 'confirmed'. But in the new edition it is shown as 'Ignored'. When I first saw this I thought I mistakenly clicked the reject button. When I opened the desktop to send a request, I saw the person as my friend. This again happened one day later which confirmed the bug.
SPEED
The app now is slower than the mobile version of facebook which offer a slightly less featured 'social network'. Also the desirability of the content decreased as most of the items on the wall now contains 'x' is now friends with 'Y' and 10 others (on my last visit 11 out of first 20 posts were in this class). I virtually had no use with these posts as friend finder is a very good at justifying its name.
MESSAGES
Messages have a good addition as 'to be replied' messages are now marked, so you would know whom to message.
NOTIFICATIONS
You can now set notifications for messages, friend requests and invites. Messages includes both chats and messages and the notification comes only like' you have 2 messages'. Usually clicking on the notification will lead to chat or messages directly. But there were occurrences of appearance of notification without the arrival of any new message or chat.
UPDATE : The notification is more a menace now than a help. What would you expect to happen when you click on a notification item about a new message?. Open app in the correct section ( Chat or message) and show you the message. right?. There is the twist, 4 out of 5 notifications opened nothing. No program opening, no showing the chat, nothing. Just the notification item disappeared thats all.
CONCLUSION
When I downloaded facebook for android for the first time it was an app with 4.5 stars but at the time of writing this it has dipped tot 3.5 because of a large number of negative reviews(One starred ) on the current version. The app now look like an alpha version of the new interface( Its quality is definitely below beta). If the facebook developers do not wake up, the app will end up with 2 or 3 stars by the time they roll out a bug fixed release.
UPDATE: the 1.6.1 version didn't address many of the problems people pointed out about the previous version. They just added some more half baked functions. Is facebook abandoning Andriod platform?. Android reached 550,000 activations per day by july 14 2011. How can they ignore a platform on which a million devices are activated every other day?. Or is it facebook just going away from what is potentially going to be a Google + territory?
UPDATE 2: 1.6.2 app was one of the best in series with apparently no issues in most phones. The app raised the star rating to 3.5. But the newest release of facebook for android 1.6.3 proved to be a disaster again. So any one in 1.6.2 please stay there. And update only after reading the latest app reviews from market.
The app from the official source is always expected to be the best one. But here the case is different. The newest update actually made the app a disabled one. Many of the sections that worked fine previously in the 1.5.x version went completely rogue on the latest version
HOME SCREEN
Home screen in facebook for android is almost similar to the one in previous edition. Home screen provides access to the 9 sections and provide you with a scroll of graphics (photos and videos ) in your news feed.
NEWS FEED
The interesting addition to the news feed section is the ability to upload videos . Uploading videos is done by clicking the camera icon on the second line. The top right button on the news feed screen now lets you select the type of information you want to be displayed on the screen. All of these were good intentions but a crappy code for the implementation of the functionality drove the facebook app to a ditch.
News feed now refreshes constantly every 2 or so seconds if we select anything other than videos and in the latter case nothing loads at all.
UPDATE: News feed is now working fine but videos are still in dark. The news feed is equipped with continuous scrolling which is kinda good because it loads additional items automatically when you near the end of list.
UPDATE 2 : App crashes many a times when trying to download the news feed. The newest update of 1.6.1 also didn't fix this.
CHAT
Chat is the worst part of the new update. Most of the time the chat keeps on loading like forever and finally will say "none of your friends are available to chat" or connection terminated. The no friend thing was always false when I cross checked on my desktop browser.
Another bug in the chat function is the reappearance of active conversations even after I closed it long time ago. I had three conversations currently in that section one of which actually ended 2 weeks ago ( on the previous version) and I have been trying to close it since then.
There was only one successful chat after the current update and this too had many glitches. Posts will appear to be published for sometime and then will vanish mysteriously, without the person at the other end ever seeing it.
One 'dangerous' bug in the program is the swap of the posts. ie, posts intended for one person went to another. This happened to me only once but could have created potentially serious complications so I decided not to use chat until an update is available.
UPDATE: The newest update 1.6.1 resolved most of the previous problems but created new ones. Some times when I am chatting with another person, what I write come in chat screen and what he replies will come in messages section.
FRIENDS REQUEST
In the previous edition, confirming a friend request gave an acknowledgment 'confirmed'. But in the new edition it is shown as 'Ignored'. When I first saw this I thought I mistakenly clicked the reject button. When I opened the desktop to send a request, I saw the person as my friend. This again happened one day later which confirmed the bug.
SPEED
The app now is slower than the mobile version of facebook which offer a slightly less featured 'social network'. Also the desirability of the content decreased as most of the items on the wall now contains 'x' is now friends with 'Y' and 10 others (on my last visit 11 out of first 20 posts were in this class). I virtually had no use with these posts as friend finder is a very good at justifying its name.
MESSAGES
Messages have a good addition as 'to be replied' messages are now marked, so you would know whom to message.
NOTIFICATIONS
You can now set notifications for messages, friend requests and invites. Messages includes both chats and messages and the notification comes only like' you have 2 messages'. Usually clicking on the notification will lead to chat or messages directly. But there were occurrences of appearance of notification without the arrival of any new message or chat.
UPDATE : The notification is more a menace now than a help. What would you expect to happen when you click on a notification item about a new message?. Open app in the correct section ( Chat or message) and show you the message. right?. There is the twist, 4 out of 5 notifications opened nothing. No program opening, no showing the chat, nothing. Just the notification item disappeared thats all.
CONCLUSION
When I downloaded facebook for android for the first time it was an app with 4.5 stars but at the time of writing this it has dipped tot 3.5 because of a large number of negative reviews(One starred ) on the current version. The app now look like an alpha version of the new interface( Its quality is definitely below beta). If the facebook developers do not wake up, the app will end up with 2 or 3 stars by the time they roll out a bug fixed release.
UPDATE: the 1.6.1 version didn't address many of the problems people pointed out about the previous version. They just added some more half baked functions. Is facebook abandoning Andriod platform?. Android reached 550,000 activations per day by july 14 2011. How can they ignore a platform on which a million devices are activated every other day?. Or is it facebook just going away from what is potentially going to be a Google + territory?
UPDATE 2: 1.6.2 app was one of the best in series with apparently no issues in most phones. The app raised the star rating to 3.5. But the newest release of facebook for android 1.6.3 proved to be a disaster again. So any one in 1.6.2 please stay there. And update only after reading the latest app reviews from market.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave your comments here