By It’s no secret that the big brass at Facebook isn’t all too pleased with the current state of the social network’s native Android app. Over the summer there were reports that founder Mark Zuckerberg was forcing members of his development team to make the switch to Android simply to see how bad the Facebook experience really is. With Android deployment at an all time high, the company is now encouraging more employees to take up an Android smartphone to aid in the development of a better app.
The campaign consists of a series of posters asking employees to “switch today.” The one above is particularly telling with its depiction of Android outpacing the iOS ecosystem that Facebook’s staff is so tied to. According to a Facebook spokesperson, the whole thing is working with a larger number of employees now carrying devices from both platform.
The changeover extends beyond the development team, but all Android-toting employees are being provided with a beta of the new Facebook app for Android. The internal version of the software includes a nifty bug-reporting technique. When the app does something particularly frustrating, users can “rage shake” their phone to report the bug. Something tells us this won’t make it to the public version, but it sure sounds like an intuitive way to get bug input.
We sure hope the initiative has the desired result. Personally, I uninstalled the Facebook app months ago and rely on the browser if I want to check the network on my phone (let’s be honest: it’s the same experience, anyway, sans a few not-so-useful notification options).
A truly native version with a bit more care to detail could remedy the Facebook woes we have experienced since the app first came to Android, and I share the stance of Zuckerberg. Until things are fixed, Facebook for Android is virtually unusable.
[via TechCrunch]
While I will never install the Facebook app on my phone again I would, when considering two equal applications, go with the one that allowed a rage shake as a method of initiating exceptions when I had a problem.
I only really use it for the contact list integration, because I havent as of yet moved everything into my gcontacts.
funny thing is that i haven’t had problems with the facebook app on my galaxy nexus…
Other than the fact that it doesn’t sync Facebook contacts at all …
There are a dozen apps or so to fill this void (e.g. HaxSync, Friendcaster, etc)
I don’t think there was anything really wrong other than it performs poorly and its not much of a UI. What I hate most about the fb app is that it collects info from your text message db and you grant it free reign on your phone. FB is not someone I would trust for that kind of info. google yes because I already gave them my soul so who cares.
Agreed. I never trusted that app by allowing it sync anything with my phone, and boy was I glad when that debacle with FB deleting people’s email addresses from your phone book happened. Never ever will I allow FB to sync following that.
Yeah, it’s missing some features that would be nice but I’ve never had any real problems with it (including the slowness that some seem to have experienced).
I’d like to see Krause do a follow up explaining what the hell he means by this sentence: “Until things are fixed, Facebook for Android is virtually unusable.”
honestly i use it everyday and dont really think its that awful. Granted it has its issues, but IMO its much more useful and convenient over the browser based option.
It works, but it’s slow, has more network timeout issues than any other app, and if you leave on notifications, it likes to slowly gorges itself on memory and cpu.
The problem is the lack of features. Don’t get me wrong though it used to be completely useless because it wouldn’t refresh or even bring up the news feed. It has since been improved but there are still many problems.
Just one I saw yesterday, simple things that are missing. Someone commented on an entire album I have of photos with a question. There was no option to reply in the app, on the web version there was a reply box rite under his comment where it should be.
I’ve been going to the browser version quite often because things won’t load up. So…?
Obviously you haven’t owned an iphone before. I use a note 2 now but comparing with my old ip4 it is still day and night unfortunately. ..
I use FriendCaster and I am not ashamed to say it!
I love Friendcaster’s scrollable widget.
I wish I could move to Friendcaster full time, I even bought the pro version. But since many of my friends have security settings which block third party apps, I don’t get all my friends updates. So basically Friendcaster is useless, despite being faster, more stable, more attractive and just generally better in every single way than the official FB app…
Its usable in its current state. Its just undesirable.
compare to G+ app, the fb app is horrendous. I think internally fb has all kinds of organization issues. If you compare the web site of facebook with the mobile web site and mobile app there is no consistency. Even how you logout is different in each of the 3 cases (the app logouts out from 3 dot menu, mobile site logs out from a left hand menu, main site from drop down of your user profile). Seems like a minor thing but for a company of that size to not recognize those types of issues for so long is an indication of some greater issue that the public doesn’t see.
I agree: the G+ app should be what Facebook aspires to be. If more of my friends would actually use it I would drop FB period. Google+ is that good now.
Face book isn’t that bad,I use it often.
Has anyone emailed that fb email in the pictures with your number, model, and carrier?
I use it daily on my galaxy nexus and a lot of the time it works fine.
The biggest problem I have is it deciding on it’s own that it’s always going to open to one article or persons profile, or deciding that I don’t need to see updates in my feed, even when I pull down the screen for updates. I just manually kill the app and restart it when it starts acting up and it usually fixes it. Hopefully, this focus on Android will fix some of these issues.
Sorry apple won’t be long till android takes facebook
The phone app isn’t the worst but the tablet one is horrendous compared to the ipad.
I also don’t have any problems with the FB app. However, I only use it for quick checks and status updates/check-ins. For my limited usage it works just fine.
That bastard of an app don’t know thr difference between syncing with current contacts vs. syncing your whole friend list. I guess that’s their way of making my phone book look like I have a lot friends. I’m not impressed.
I was one that hated the damn app. I use Friendcaster most the time. To be fair to the app its improved but still needs more.
My wife uses the app everyday. Doesn’t seem to have problems for her.
I find the Android experience laggy and not particularly intuitive. Sometimes I click something, no response, click again just as it updates, and end up going somewhere else. It’s annoying.
It really depends on the phone and software.
I have a question…how do you search for a friend in the mobile app? I have never figured that out. I want to see their time line. I can click on their name in the news feed but there is no way to search. Well…There probably is but I can’t find it.
I just sent in my request. Hopefully [email protected] answers soon.
I don’t think I have one app that works 100% perfect. Even making a call locks up sometimes. For me it works better than the FB app on my iPod touch.
Not real nerds @facebook. Real Nerds have more than one phone and have used all the platforms. Real app devs have an app on each market. #skills
Next we need Netflix’s engineers to switch to Android.