Review on Facebook 8.0 for iOS
The latest version of Facebook for iPhone and iPad boasts new features, a cleaner interface, and an overall better experience. The mobile app allows you to view your news feed, post status updates, upload pictures and photos, and more. Facebook 8.0 is well integrated into iOS 7. You can simply enter your Facebook ID and password in the iOS settings for easier use of Facebook. It’s now more convenient to upload pictures from Camera Roll, play various Facebook games with friends, and keep everyone updated with your daily activities.
Clean, Smart, Easy-to-Use App
iPhone View
Image Credit Facebook, Inc.
Facebook 8.00 has a neat blue and white interface. Compared to the web-based site, the app has a simpler and cleaner interface that allows you to scroll down the news feed to browse status updates in a horizontal space. The Sponsored and Trending sidebar has been removed, although you may occasionally see Sponsored posts in the news feed. The design is more visual, and photos are displayed bigger for easy viewing. When you tap a photo, it instantly opens into full-screen, and you can save and share photos quickly.
When you insert a link to a web page, images are automatically pulled in from the page. Links now open within the Facebook browser instead of bouncing to the Safari app. You’ll find your list of favorites on the right-hand of the screen, when you use your iPad in horizontal mode. To see your list of Apps, Friends and Settings, simply slide to the left of the screen. You’ll find Status, Photos, and Check In icons above the news feed.
New Features in Facebook 8.0
iPad View
Here are the new features in Facebook’s latest update:
- Faster and more reliable
- Updated design for easier posting and sharing on iPad
- Simple way to view and select a photo album’s audience
An interesting new feature in Facebook 8.0 is the ability to share posts selectively. When you click the Status button, you’ll see a new area marked “To.” Tapping this allows you to pick from various options. It’s even possible to post a status update just to yourself. This feature is useful if you have numerous friends, and you’d like to choose who will see your status updates.
Improvements for reliability and speed is perhaps what matters the most for regular users. Many users have been constantly complaining about frustrating app crashes and problems with managing some of the settings. Facebook is notoriously a clunky app especially on iPads. The new version appears to run faster with lesser instances of news feed loading failure or web pages that show white, blank screen when clicked. It’s far from perfect, but it seems more reliable than the previous version.
What Users Are Saying About the New Update
Surprisingly, despite the new update, many users still have plenty of complaints about the Facebook app. Here are several problems with the app based on real customer feedback:
- Comments on other people’s post don’t refresh. — One user mentioned that after posting a comment on another person’s post, new comments fail to appear. After getting a notification and tapping on it, the post is still the same, and the user can’t see new content. The user further mentioned that she can read the new comments through email notifications; however, the comments don’t show up on the Facebook app itself even after closing and reopening the app or restarting the phone.
- Messy news feed — This is a real problem, because you can’t go back to where you left off after scrolling through the news feed or clicking on a link. The news feed auto-refreshes, which is a bad thing for many users who hate seeing new posts appear while browsing. Users complain that the app refreshes every time they leave/close it and even while reading a post.
- Hard to manage group settings — One user suggests that all of the settings should be accessible from the app. This would be a handy feature, considering that we can’t be near our computer all the time. It would be useful to moderate a group from the app.
Is It an App Worth Downloading for iPhone and iPad?
There aren’t many third-party apps that allow you to access Facebook on your mobile devices, unlike Twitter which has numerous apps that allow you to access it, such as Hootsuite and Tweetbot. Users can mostly access Facebook only using apps developed by Facebook. Although there are apps that allow you to post updates, such as Buffer, you can’t use them for general browsing and adjusting Facebook settings. Thus, the official Facebook app is generally the top choice for users who want to use Facebook smoothly on their mobile device. Although Facebook 8.0 still has a long way to go to be a highly satisfactory app to most users, it’s still a clean, intuitive, and easy-to-use app worth downloading if you want to access your Facebook from your mobile device.
