September 10th, 2009
Faceoff on Facebook: comparing all the official mobile clients
Facebook is an extremely popular social networking site that continues to increase in popularity. I personally can hardly stand the web version of Facebook and prefer to use a more efficient mobile version on my smartphones. With the new official Facebook client for Android just being released I decided to create a post that discusses the official Facebook clients (there are 3rd party alternatives in some cases) running on the iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android, Sidekick, and BlackBerry platforms. While there is some slick Facebook integration on the Palm Pre and WebOS, there is not yet any official Facebook client. As you will see in the following comparison, there is one client that is clearly the leader with most all of the others at about the same level of functionality. Check out my image gallery showing several of the mobile Facebook clients.
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| Image Gallery:Check out screenshots from four of the six mobile Facebook clients. |  |
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Facebook on the iPhone
A major update was recently released for the iPhone client that took Facebook on a mobile phone to the next level. It is so good that I find there is no need to visit the full Facebook web page and I get an experience that doesn’t have all of the stupid zombie invites, etc.
When you launch Facebook on the iPhone you will find there is a main page with icons for nine functions, including News Feed, Profile, Friends, Inbox, Chat, Requests, Events, Photos, and Notes. You can tap the upper left + sign to add your favorite friends to additional pages for quick access to their wall, feeds, and other Facebook information.
Tapping on News Feed takes you to your news feed page where you can see the latest status updates. There is an upper left icon to jump back to the main launch page and an upper right icon to filter your news feed into the categories that you may have already setup online. A camera icon appears to the left of your status update box and tapping that makes a pop-up appear (same one as you will soon see when MMS support is enabled) so you can upload a photo or video from the camera or your library. The old Facebook client let you upload photos, but not video. Below your status box are your news feed posts with an area to tap to refresh the feeds. Scrolling all the way to the bottom you can see an option to load older posts too. You can tap the + symbol next to a news feed to Like/Unlike an entry or leave a comment on the post. This is the area where most people will spend their time and it is extremely functional and useful. Shake to reload news feeds is also supported.
The Profile icon lets you view your Wall, Info, and Photos as well as allowing you the ability to upload photos or video and update your status. Tapping on your profile photo even gives you options to tag it, like it, and change it to another photo right on your iPhone.
With a tap on the Friends icon you will see an alphabetical list of your Facebook friends and phone icons for those with phone numbers in their profile. Tapping the phone shows Land, Mobile, and SMS so you can contact your friend in a number of ways. There is also a tab at the bottom to access Pages.
The Inbox option lets you view your messages, updates, and sent items (accessible via bottom icons).
I never use Chat in Facebook, but with the iPhone application that may change since this implementation is done very well and my wife and more friends are embracing Facebook as a platform for communication. Tapping on Chat shows you a list of your Facebook friends and their online status (green circle for online). Tapping on your friend’s name opens a chat window so you can hold a conversation with them. The cool thing is that chats in Facebook use that same slick iPhone bubble interface to make holding conversations enjoyable. Active chats appear at the top of your list so you can hold multiple conversations at once. This Facebook application also supports background notifications so you can pop out of it and back in when someone responds.
If there are any Requests sent to you they will appear on the iPhone. When you tap Events you will see lists of events and birthdays from your friends. Birthdays are arranged by date from newest to oldest and in some cases the upcoming person’s age appears (if they entered the data into Facebook). This is actually very cool and a functionality I can see being very helpful for planning things.
Photos lets you view your photo albums and gives you the ability to create new albums. Photos can also be uploaded to your albums using this iPhone interface.
I have never used Facebook Notes, but see that this module appears on the main Facebook iPhone page as well.
As you can see the new Facebook iPhone application is extremely powerful and functional. Now we just need to get the iPhone out there on carriers other than AT&T in the US for adoption to really take off.
Let’s check out the Windows Mobile application ยช
Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 09/10/09
