August 28th, 2009
Facebook 3.0 for iPhone released and reviewed
As expected, Apple last night approved the highly anticipated Facebook 3 app for the iPhone and iPod touch – 11 days after it was submitted for approval. If you have a previous version installed you’ll get an update notification when you tap the Updates button. The newest version of the popular app adds several new features, including:
- Landscape mode
- See your upcoming Events and RSVP
- See your friends’ birthdays
- See Pages and post updates and photos to Pages you administer
- Write Notes and read your friends’ Notes
- Upload videos from an iPhone 3GS
- Upload photos to any album
- Complete photo management (create albums, delete albums, delete photos, delete photo tags)
- Change your Profile Picture
- Zoom into photos
- Like posts and photos
- See the same News Feed as the Facebook website
- Visit links in a built-in web browser
- See all of your friends’ friends and Pages
- See mutual friends
- Easily search for people and Pages
- Make friend requests
- Become a fan of Pages
- Quickly call or text your friends
- Create shortcuts to your favorite friends and Pages
- Friends sorted by first or last name according to your settings
- Chat friends sorted alphabetically
(emphasis mine)
TechCrunch has posted a review of the Facebook 3 app saying it may be the most useful app on the iPhone yet. Hewitt notes in a Facebook post that the one feature everyone is asking for, Push Notifications, didn’t make it into 3.0 but that we can expect it in a 3.1 update “later this summer.”
Developer Joe Hewitt has been a vocal critic of Apple’s app review process taking issue with Apple’s guilty until proved innocent approach to dealing with developers, saying “They don’t trust us, and I resent that, because the vast majority of us are trustworthy.” Hewitt proposed a radical change to the approval process, calling for Apple to remove it altogether.
The Facebook app is currently rated 4+ on the App Store.
Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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