Facebook has launched an update for its official Android app that brings about something users have been wanting for quite some time – speed.
The new update lists speed as its top feature in the new update, and it has every right to. Compared to previous versions, it’s like a whole new app. Where previously Facebook for Android was extremely slow to load and refresh the news feed and even slower to open your notifications, the new version zips through just about everything.
“Keeping up with friends is faster than ever” says the tagline in the Play Store. There are few changes to the way the app looks, as all the work seems to have gone into the “under the hood” stuff. Whatever they’ve done, it works, and we’ve found it so much faster to flick through your news feed, open notifications and messages and access both the chat and pages sidebars.
When scrolling through your news feed the app doesn’t tend to stop to load new content, and image thumbnails all seem to load up almost immediately as you scroll down. Facebook has done away with the old ‘pull to refresh’ affair on the news feed, replacing it with a simple button that shows how many new stories there are – tap it to load them.
“Today we’re announcing a faster Facebook app for people who use Android devices. Facebook for Android 2.0 is twice as fast when looking at photos and opening your Timeline and noticeably quicker to launch,”
Facebook acknowledged that there’s little in the way of new stuff to look at, but it insists the update is important going forward;
“This new release creates a solid foundation for the Facebook for Android app moving forward. The infrastructure in place will let us continue to make the app even faster, smoother, and feature-rich,”
Facebook 2.0 for Android is now available to download for free from the Play Store.