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FacebookCurrent Version: 4.1.1

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Facebook for iPhone and iPad

Facebook for iPad
With high-res photos, games, chat and more, now you can get the best of Facebook—on your iPad.

- Enjoy bigger, better photos: Your photos are high-res and easy to flip through, like a real photo album
- Navigate anywhere, fast: Just tap, slide or pinch to move from one screen to another
- Play games on the go: Access your favorite Facebook apps and games, wherever you are
- Focus on what matters: Zoom in on your friends' photos, updates and stories
- Never lose your place: Share a photo, update your status or send a message without leaving News Feed
- See who's nearby: Check out the Nearby map to see what your friends are up to

Facebook for iPhone
Facebook for iPhone lets you stay connected and share with friends on the go. Start a chat, keep up with friends' photos and status updates, look up a phone number, upload photos to Facebook and more—right from your iPhone.

What's New in Version 4
With improved search and browsing, the facebook.com features you use most are now just a touch away. It’s a faster, fuller Facebook for iPhone.

- Games & Apps: Play games and access your favorite apps on the go
- Navigation: Send a message or see your notifications from any screen, and swipe to browse Facebook without losing your place in News Feed
- Bookmarks: Your groups, pages and apps are all in your left-hand menu, and the ones you use most are right on top
- Search: Search for anything on Facebook—people, apps, pages and more—without having to click around or switch views
- Security: We’ve added a few updates to make the app more secure

Facebook is only available for users age 13 and over.
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Facebook Screenshots


Facebook Review

Despite quirks, app provides a superb way to browse the social network

by Lex Friedman, Macworld.com

Facebook’s free iPhone app long reigned at or near the top of the App Store’s charts. But iPad owners were forced to rely on either Facebook’s touch-optimized website or any of a slew of third-party apps to access the social network from Apple’s tablet. That all changed in October, when Facebook unveiled the latest incarnation of its now-universal iOS app.


It's Just a Swipe from the Left: Facebook’s navigation bar can appear and vanish with simple swipes.

The updated Facebook app, particularly on the iPad, owes a debt of gratitude to the official Twitter app for iOS. Like Twitter, Facebook now employs horizontally sliding sheets to bring in additional information. Swiping from the left exposes the app’s main navigation bar; swiping from the right brings in the chat module—though only in landscape mode, not portrait. I understand that limitation—there’s only so much horizontal space—but that doesn’t stop my addled brain from attempting to swipe to show it on occasion while orienting my iPad vertically.

When you first launch Facebook, you land on your News Feed. As on the website, you can switch from Facebook’s algorithmically-determined Top News to Most Recent updates by tapping a button. But the Facebook app actually offers more options than the website: You can also choose to show only Status Updates, Photos, or Link posts.

Scrolling through your news feed works as you’d expect. As in previous incarnations of the iPhone-only version of the app, scrolling is endless; older posts load in automatically as you near the bottom of the screen. Pulling down from the top of your feed triggers a refresh.


Mind the Gap: The Facebook app leaves a surprising amount of whitespace between where statuses end and the right margin begins.

On the iPad, however, the Facebook app makes odd use of space. In portrait mode, there’s a wide gap between where statuses end and the icon for adding Likes or comments appears. If you slide in the navigation bar on the left side, the right margin of those posts instead gets cut off. In portrait mode, then, statuses have the unusual distinction of being simultaneously too wide and too narrow.

In landscape view on the iPad, Facebook always displays either the Chat module or the left navigation bar. (Your swiping determines which.) There’s still a bizarrely wide gap between the artificial margin for posts and the right edge of the screen, though.

When you tap to see comments, they fold in from the right edge of the screen, which makes them easy to navigate. Occasionally, though, when I’d tap for comments while in landscape mode with the navigation menu displayed, the comments column wouldn’t properly slide into view. Tapping around enough would fix the problem.


Peek-A-Boo: In landscape mode, comments sometimes don't fold out all the way. Tapping around a few times to dismiss the comments before re-tapping to bring them back fixes the problem.

Odd layout choices aside, Facebook’s app gets a lot right. As it does with comments, the app smartly doesn’t bother refreshing the whole screen on the iPad when you tap to see friend requests, messages, or notifications. Instead, a iPhone screen-sized popover appears for each of those features, so you don’t lose your place.

The left-side navigation bar is great, too. It includes a search bar that searches across your friends, groups, and Facebook pages, along with quick access to your saved groups, pages, and apps. There’s also a link called Nearby, which is a bit of a misnomer; it shows your friends’ latest check-ins, with a pretty cool map view. It’s not quite as amusingly stalkerish as Find My Friends, but it’s close.


Where in the World: The misnamed Nearby section displays icons for your friends’ most recent check-ins all over the map.

Once you get the hang of Facebook’s navigation, it’s pretty clever. You swipe from side to side to expose the navigation pane, but you can use that same swipe after you navigate a page or two deeper to go back the way you came. That is, if I tap on a friend’s mention of another friend to go the second user’s profile, and then tap on a Web link from that profile, a couple swipes from left to right take me back to where I left off.

So, despite a few quirks, the new iPad version of Facebook’s app really achieves most of the features I wished for: Omnipresent links make it easy to jump to frequently accessed sections, chat is always available, and general news feed interaction is simple. And Facebook’s decision to port as much of the new iPad functionality to the app’s iPhone interface was a smart one; Facebook on the iPhone is now cleaner and quicker to navigate than ever before. That said, some of my Macworld colleagues report the occasional problem with the app—it’s crashed for them or it’s been slow to load. I never encountered that in my testing. Despite a few hiccups, Facebook for iOS offers an experience at least as good as the company’s website for navigating the social network.

[Lex Friedman is a Macworld staff writer.]

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Critic Reviews of Facebook iPhone App


User Reviews of Facebook iPhone App

36 Macworld User Reviews
1907594 iTunes User Reviews View »

Our user review snapshot

  • 86.0%
  • 89.0%
  • 80.0%

Our user reviews IN DETAIL:

Photo Upload Bugs...Still

With myself and the three friends I also had try it, photo uploads from the iPad or iPhone do not show in the news feed. This was a bug the app suffered from a long time ago, looks like it's back. This pretty much ruins the whole point of updating while mobile for me. Of course, there's no logical way to submit this bug to Facebook either.

Different look, same bugs

It looks nicer yes, but that's about it. The same problems from previous versions still exist on this one. When you click on the icons at the top when it tells you have so many messages (message or globe), it's suppose to take you to another page to touch the message(s) and go to it. Unfortunately, it takes FOREVER to load, IF it ever does. It's faster just to go to the original poster's page and go to the post and see the comments or replies than to do it the "quicker" way. As well, when you touch on a picture, it doesn't take you to that picture. Rather it takes you to a completely different picture. Not all the time, but quite a bit. More than enough to get frustrated with the app. Again, you would have to go to the original posters page, and either touch the picture there, or go to their Photos section and locate the picture you want to see in full view. Slow process and pain in the ass. I'm giving them a generous 3 stars. But they only deserve 2. FAIL FB, FAIL! And yes, I've deleted and installed several times already. No, I will not restore my phone as new just to get your lame ass app to work. All of my other apps work just fine.

Missing some functionality

I think the goal of a mobile app needs to be to provide the same or more functionality of the source app (here, the website). To wit, it's still missing the sbility to share a link, photo, etc, unless I'm missing something. Seems it would be a simple item to add to the little "plus" button which allows you to Like and Comment. If it had that, it would be darn near perfect for my needs.

Great but...

Great app. has nice iphone like interface. with fb chat it will only vibrate on iphone and on ipod touch it doesnt make any noise which is really annoying. toher than that great app

FB Videos...

The only thing missing the facebook videos and this app would have reached it's potential. And maybe if you could skin the app different colors that would be pretty sweet too.

Getting there

It would certainly help if it was a universal app, available for the iPad as well. Nonetheless, it is functional and certainly provides an interface for quick responses and posting.

Easy to use

What a great app. The best use of my iPhone

Good facebook app, could be improved.

App is good for mobile browsing, great organization. Needs support for apps, pages, and groups.

Well done

Does more than you would expect. Better than any paid 3rd party app. A first-page app for any facebook user

Wonderful!

Very nice integration of a web service onto the iPhone/iTouch platform. Ver. 3.0 addresses any and all of the previous issues.

Could be better

The app could be better. Now that there is a team of developers are working on it, maybe bugs will get fixed quicker.

Excellent App!

This application by Facebook feels like it belongs on the iPhone and iPod touch. My iPod touch would not be the same without the facebook app.

Amazingly in-depth free app!

Facebook for iPhone easily earns a five-star review. It allows users to do nearly everything they can on the full website (excluding applications like games) in a simple, streamlined experience. Facebook loads information and news quickly (although it's a little slow with pictures, putting emphasis on "A LITTLE!") and met all my expectations. The 3.0 update really put this app high above any others!

A bit annoying

The app is good and attractive but it crashes and gives me errors a lot when i use it. It is really simple to use and does everything Facebook is supposed to do. When I try to do a chat, sometimes it says that the message could not be sent at this time. I'm guessing that means they logged out but it still shows them as logged in. That's pretty much my only problem.

Entirely Adequate

The Facebook app is much better than the 1.0 versions. I use this app most days with no crashes. You have access to the major functions of facebook and no access to user-created applications, like Farmville. Notes, photos, events, messages, and chat are all accessible, even notifications. The user experience is excellent, with only a few limitations, such as being unable to process event or group requests. Friend requests still work, however. As a free application, this is recommended to all Facebook users.

better than i thought

i thought the upgrade was go be a few bug fixes and thats it but its a whole new app and i love it i mean its easy to use and whatever you need done you can do.

Staying Connected

This free download is a good app to have. It is an easy to use app that gives you the basic functionality you need on the go. Other than an occasional problem of getting my home page to update, this app has performed well.

Good for on the Go.

Facebook's app for the iPhone/iPod Touch is good for keeping up on the go. While it is a very much watered down version of the famous social networking site, it gets you what you need. Moving forward, Facebook really needs to overhaul the app if they are going to keep it up with how the main site is moving. But it is worth the FREE download.

If you love FB you need this app...

Everyday FB users this is the must have app for your iphone !

Great App!

I use the facebook app everyday. For the most part it does everything I need quickly. Only complaints would be that it constantly tells me I have mail in facebook even after I viewed them. There is no delete option in the mail. You cannot mark a photo as your primary but it does upload photo's easily.

Overall: A good app

This app kept me connected on Facebook. I could update my status and upload photo's. I could also add friends and accept friend requests. All my notifications are there. You can not use any of the applications though. That is pretty much the only downside.

It's almost everything need from FB on the iPhone

Fairly quick, pretty stable, and reads well. Things missing include; ability to "like" something, ability to be able to comment into an original post when clicking on an update from a subsequent poster-instead of taking you to the original, it takes you to that later poster's home page.

Great Facebook!

This is a great little Facebook app. It offers more functionality than the iPhone optimized web version and is much faster. Most functions/items are logically thought out and placed.

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