The Facebook app surely has its fair share of issues, and has been something of discussion for a long time in the Android world. With the new Facebook Home, their app was improved significantly, but it looks like Facebook isn’t done with the improvements yet. They’ve just announced a Facebook Beta for Android. One that promises a faster, smoother, better performing app, but we’ve heard that before.
Back when Zuckerberg and company announced Facebook Home, they promised a monthly update cycle. So far we’ve been seeing updates almost every month, and they once again state that here. Instead of just updating every 4 weeks, they’ll be opening a beta program where users cant test the new app and features 7-10 days early.
Facebook mentions the “diversity of devices and OS versions” is a problem for Facebook, and getting everything to scale properly, so in a way they’re tossing out the fragmentation claim this afternoon. In the end however, they do mention the main goal will be performance and reliability across all Android devices. So that’s a good sign.
If you remember, Facebook added behind-the-scenes automatic app updates without support of the Google Play Store. A move that Google quickly killed, banning external app updates on Android. Then at Google I/O they launched their Play Store beta program, something that is very manageable and controlled. This solution works best for both Google and Facebook, so that’s what we have.
The beta actually opens today, and we’ll be seeing updates in the future for both Facebook’s regular app, and the newly announced beta program. Who thinks this will help the app improve?
VIA: Facebook
Play Store Beta link
I’m still on an old version of the Facebook app, the one right before their Home launch that requested a lot of extra unnecessary permissions. I won’t be updating until they release an update that relinquishes those unnecessary permissions, which will probably never happen, so as soon as they change their API such that this version no longer works I’ll just be stuck without a Facebook app.
Yup. Basically.
you could just use pdroid and reject it…