Facebook's Android app goes native, gets much faster

Facebook today announced that its app for Android was getting a new update, making it faster and also allowing users to open photos with a tap, so you can quickly like and comment. The resulting Facebook 2.0 for Android is now twice as fast when you launch the app, or look at photos.

Facebook enigneer Philip Fung announced the changes in the Facebook newsroom today.

So what’s new on the app? It seems Facebook has finally got rid of the HTML 5 ‘webviews’ and has instead taken to native codes to make using the app a faster experience. The Android app is built from scratch using Android’s Software Development Kit (SDK), which should improve user experience.

The app now launches considerably faster. News feed, notifications and Timeline have been rebuilt for a speedier performance.

[caption id=“attachment_557436” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Facebook’s new Android app. Image from Facebook Newsroom.[/caption]

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With the new photo feature, apart from being able to tap on any photo to open it right away, users can also scroll through photo albums without leaving the news feed.

The app will also let you scroll through Timelines, Photos etc much faster. The notifications tab has undergone a massive change and is loading faster.

Facebook also updated the iOS app and this one too promises faster speed for loading your Timeline as well as giving users the option to choose which album to upload an image to.