Having used the iPhone 4S for roughly a month or so we have been very impressed with Apple’s latest smartphone offering, however one thing which we think is very lacking is the overall Facebook experience.
We have been using Android for roughly 18 months and we love how socially-connected you feel whilst using a smartphone which runs this OS, however we can’t say the same for iOS 5 – here’s what we think needs to change.
Let’s start with the most obvious annoyance, the lackluster official Facebook app available at the App Store. This application is ever-improving, but in our opinion far too slow and clunky for an enjoyable user-experience. When connected to Three UK’s HSPA+ network at roughly 4Mbps down and 1.5Mbps the app still seemed sluggish, especially when tapping on notifications. In comparison the official Google+ app for iPhone is quite similar in terms of functionality but runs much more smoothly, how is it that such a comparably infantile application has already trumped one of the most download applications at the App Store? Sometimes when trying to access Facebook on the iPhone 4S it was far easier to use Safari, navigate to www.facebook.com and log in that way – this seems mad given the huge popularity of Facebook and the iPhone doesn’t it.
These days people love to quickly and easily share photos and videos with social networks and websites, however when browsing through your iPhone’s gallery there is no easy way to share media with Facebook. The video embedded at the end of this post explains exactly what options are available to you, we are sure that people would use a “Share to Facebook” option more than some of the options that are currently there. Instead you have a long-winded process of going into the Facebook app, going into Photos and then manually uploading your photos – this seems archaic compared to the way that Android allows you to share your photos and videos with Facebook.
We really think that iPhone owners deserve a richer Facebook experience than they currently get, even if they just addressed the issues raised in this brief article we think it would be a huge improvement – do you agree? What other improvements would you like to see?
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