Facebook for android 1.8.0 review - Desktop, finally!!

This is the review of Facebook for android 1.8.0 update which was released on December 1st 2011. Facebook app for android was a focus of criticism for long as it lacked the ease of use provided by its desktop counterpart.

Thanks to the developers at Facebook, its android app now looks and walks like its desktop version.

Home

Opening the facebook app still loads the news feed. But there are lot of additions to the previous news feed. The developers have beautifully combined the old newsfeed screen and the Home screen with icons into a new, desktop like interface. See it below.

 

New Home screen now has Friend Request, message and notifications alert on the top panel as seen in the desktop version. Profile, friends, places, groups, events, facebook chat and photos are included in the top left button with the three horizontal lines.

The entire left panel of the desktop website is included in that one button. The contents are grouped into Favorites, Groups, Pages, lists, Apps (This contains the chat now) and settings.

One additional feature you get with the facebook for android 1.8.0 app is that you can select the type of content you want to see in the news feed. If you are in mood to watch videos, you can choose to view only videos in the news feed. Just click on the button on the top right corner (image on the right), and you will be asked to select the preferred content from all the stories to photos or videos alone.

    Believe me 'Video' is there at the bottom

Chat


Facebook Chat was one of the most non-dependable section of the app previously. It was buggy as hell. It took a lot of time to show availability and many a times availability wouldn't load at all

At first you may think that the chat is removed from the base facebook app as there is a separate messenger app for facebook  now. Location of the chat is now a little deeper. it is located within the left side menu button and at a lower level. Apart from the location, new chat functions, at times, slightly different. If you keep the facebook for android app open long enough, it will load the availability of chat friends in the background which result in snappy loading.

There is no multiple chat option as available in the facebook messenger, but still works good for me.

The "None of your friends are available to chat" error also occur in this version of facebook. But always it was a temporary message and chat loaded within no time.

Friend Requests, Messages and Notifications



These are accessible from the top panel. The number of unattended notifications will be highlighted in red color on the upper right corner of each icon.

Taping on icons open up a small window to view the contents, with the newsfeed in the same place. So you won't have to navigate again if you stopped reading your newsfeed to attend to a notification.

Settings

Now you can set your privacy as well as account settings using the facebook  from the android app itself. All the settings available to a desktop user is available to the app user too. I don't know why they included the privacy settings as separate menu item as it is available in the account settings too.

























Photos

With the new update, photos cannot be uploaded to a specific folder which is a big drawback. All the photos will be uploaded to 'Mobile Uploads' folder.

With the newest update you don't need to stop your browsing while an upload is in progress. Uploads will occur automatically in the background and the progress can be viewed in the notification panel. But you won't be able to stop an upload once it starts.

The Drawbacks - RAM, Force closes and Sluggishness

Not everything is neat n' shine with the newest update to the facebook app. The app is a RAM hungry beast. Once I noticed it taking up 55MB of RAM which was quite large even for a desktop app.

Update: The app is determined to break records. It actually reached to a point where it was using about 102 MB of RAM leaving the phone quite laggy. See the video below of the android task manager showing the Facebook app's RAM usage.

I think the app is trying to live upto its new desktop dress in all areas including RAM usage.

There are force closures as usual and sluggishness of the app itself forced me to close the app many a times.

Despite the drawbacks this is one update I would go for. Though it present us some glitches, functionality is improved by a great deal. So, happy facebooking.

Samsung Galaxy Ace Review Part 2 - The Connectivity

This is the part 2 of the review of samsung galaxy ace phone. This post tests different connectivity options available on the phone including GPRS/EDGE, 3G, WiFi, and GPS.

Download speeds are calculated based on the time required to download a sample 5 MB file from thinkbroadband.com website.

Another speed test was carried out using the speedtest.net's android app

Naming conventions used in this post:

Kbps- Kilo bits per second

KBps - Kilo Bytes per second - 1KBps is equivalent to 8Kbps

I am converting most of the values to KBps because of the ease to understand.

GPRS/EDGE

Galaxy ace is rated class 10 for bot GPRS and EDGE. Class 10 device should be capable to offer speeds upto 8 KBps downloads in GPRS networks and upto  32KBps in EDGE networks.

The Samsung Galaxy Ace was able to provide 4.4 KBps continuous speed in a GPRS only network (GPRS only networks are not a rarity in our country).

In EDGE networks, the phone gave me about 28 KBps average download speed which is very close to the advertised speed. But this was for the downloading of the 5MB file.

The screenshot below was taken during the 5MB download in an EDGE network. You can see that, except for a couple of dips, the download mostly clocks just below 30KBps.

Network speed test using speedtest.org app provided a little bit different result. The numbers were only about 3 KBps in GPRS networks and 22KBps in EDGE networks. However normal browsing followed the speedtest.org's results as it peaked at about 20KBps.

3G

3G networks in India is fairly underpowered. Though speeds upto 21Mbps are in offer, none actually reach that standard in practice.

Network speed in Galaxy ace with 3G networks peaked around 1Mbps which actually is far lower than the theoretical capability of the phone (7.2Mbps). But I think it mostly is due to the limitation of network, not the phone.

WiFi

The phone was very quick to find available connections even when the network available was a new one. Usually I was prompted with the available connections within 10 seconds. But familiar networks were connected within 5 seconds of switching on.

WiFi has a good range too. It maintained at least 1 bar until about 25mtr indoor.

Wifi Error - Wifi wouldn't turn on until you restart. Frequency of this was reduced considerably since the update to android 2.3.4 but still occurs once in a while.
The same problem affects wifi hotspot too. Clicking on Mobile AP box(see below) won't turn on anything.

See a demonstration of Wifi error in galaxy ace

Bluetooth

Bluetooth in samsung galaxy ace is rated class 2.1+ EDR ( Enhanced data rate) which is capable of transfers upto 262KBps. A closer speed was achieved during my test with a similarly spec-d laptop the transfer speed normally hovered around 230 KBps which I think is not bad.

However transfer speed with another mobile of the same specs was around 100KBps tops. I don't know what made the difference there sure was something.

Bluetooth audio got disconnected at about 8mtrs from the galaxy ace. From this I assume that galaxy ace is equipped with a class 2 bluetooth.

Speed reduces considerably when multiple bluetooth devices are connected to galaxy ace. Transfer speed from my laptop dropped from 230KBps to 150KBps when I started streaming music to my bluetooth stereo headset

GPS

GPS was working without any problem in the original android froyo. It began taking forever to lock after the update to gingerbread 2.3.4.

In the android 2.2 days, without using any additional software I could get a lock within 20 seconds. But after the upgrade 3-4 minutes was usual even under clear sky and if I was travelling, it didn't connect at all.

Then I found a solution to the GPS locking problem on galaxy ace. I installed an app called GPS Status from the Android Market. The app worked like a charm and now GPS is working without any problem.

Note: You won't need data connection to just get a lock on GPS. But A-GPS needs data connection to work as it needs to download location data from the internet. GPS status also needs use of internet connection as it uses A-GPS to improve locking.

I tested GPS in different conditions. The locking time was as follows. (A-GPS was enabled during the test)

Stationary, clear sky - 5 seconds

Stationary, cloudy - 20 seconds

Moving at 60 KMPH, clear sky - 20 seconds

Tethering

USB tethering icon

USB tethering icon on 2.3.4 gingerbread

WiFi Tethering icon

Tethering is a method to channel the mobile data connection to other devices such as laptops. Galaxy ace supports 2 methods for tethering viz, USB and WiFi.

USB and WiFi tethering in galaxy ace is enabled from Settings >> Wireless and connectivity settings >> Tethering and portable hotspot

  You can secure the wifi hotspot by assigning a password. Coverage of WiFi also was good getting similar results as of the Wifi test.

The phone offers a variety of connectivity options and also do justice by living upto expectations.

Take screenshots in Samsung Galaxy Ace without rooting (Update: Video)

Screenshots or screen captures allow you to take photo of visible content on a screen. This post describes a method to take screenshots in Samsung Galaxy Ace running on android 2.3.4 without rooting.

Below is a video tutorial for taking screen shots on galaxy ace.

There are a lot of apps in android market that take screenshots and all of them need rooting the phone. But rooting your phone voids the warranty (Checked with the samsung website. Rooting really does void your warranty)
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Samsung has included in its Galaxy Ace phones a built-in method to capture the screen. This method is different from the stock android method of pressing the power and volume down button together. The stock method is replaced with the new one by the TouchWiz UI.

This built-in method also requires usage of two buttons, the back button which is a touch sensitive one and the Home button which is a hard button(one which needs to be pressed down). For taking the screenshot, you need to hold the back button and then press the Home button.

Three audio-visual clues of screen capture will happen, on a successful attempt. These are a shutter sound, a small graphic appearing from all the sides and notification box displaying "Screen captured. Saved as image file"
You can see the semi transparent white graphic appearing from all the sides and the 'capture successful' message

You can also take screenshots of the lock screen with this method. But there won't be any visual clues. Only the camera click will be present.

The screenshot will be saved to 'ScreenCapture' folder in the memory card. If there is no folder under that name, one will be created. The screenshots will be saved as .png files with date and time of their capture as file name.

But taking screenshot in some apps, like opera mini, is difficult. In these apps, holding the back button will execute the back function and the screen goes back to the previous one - with out the screen shot taken - ultimately closing the app. So you won't be able to take the desired screenshot using the previously described way.

If you want to take screenshots in such apps, you need to press the back button and the Home button at the same time. Pressing both the button at the same time will not execute the back button and the desired screenshot will be captured.

Update : See the comments for another variation

This is a little awkward as one is a touch sensitive button and the other is a hard button, as we have a natural tendency to apply same pressure on both fingers when doing simultaneous press'.

Note: In Samsung galaxy ace running on android 2.2.1, there is no white graphic appearing from the sides, but all other things including the methods are applicable to android 2.2.1 also.

UPDATE : Latest update with samsung galaxy ace- the 2.3.6 version- changed to combination to HOME and POWER button. You can press these buttons together to take screenshots.
The added advantage is that you don't need to worry about getting the back function executed.