I’m not a big Facebook user, but these days it’s a bit of a necessary evil. In my opinion, the official Facebook app for Android is nothing short of atrocious. It appears just to be a different interface to the mobile web site. Friendcaster is an alternative client that makes using Facebook just that little bit more bearable, especially on a tablet like the Nexus 7.
Down the left side is an access bar that allows you to easily go to groups, notifications, messages, or pages you belong to, amongst other things, and you can change the order depending on your needs. If you need the “real estate”, you can also hide this bar. The middle column is a summary like you get on the web client, and if you click on an item here, you get the full post with all its associated likes and comments on the right side. Of course you can customize all the options, like notifications.
It’s a much nicer interface, including a nice scrollable widget.
Root required: No
Gadgeteer Comment Policy - Please read before commenting
I was using friendcaster for a few weeks and paid for the full version. After having a real-world conversation with my girlfriend about sonething a mutual friend has posted that I hadn’t seen, I discovered that because friendcaster is a third party app, if a user on fb has restricted their privacy settings they won’t appear in friendcaster at all. I immediately compared the native fb feed and what friendcaster was showing me, and I was missing out on approximately %30 of my newsfeed.
Wow, 30%!
And I was about to get the APP! 🙁
Ahh, that’s probably why I like it then…..30% less Facebook cr@p 🙂 As I say unnecessary evil 🙂
LOL Ian!!!!!
Hi Ian,
Am confused about your dislike of the native app compared to friendcaster – would have agreed with you a couple of months ago, however since then the facebook app has had a major update which I would have thought should have appeared on the nexus 7 as it has the phone interface rather than the tablet one.
The phone app is definitely a 4 to 5 star app now, and hopefully the tablets will get an update shortly to the same version on the phones.