While a lot of people still use Facebook, especially on mobile devices, its native app is not the most data and battery efficient of apps. In fact, it will probably show up on the list of apps that are constantly draining your device, in all aspects. There are 3rd party apps out there that claim to be better than the official app and Puffin for Facebook is one of them, from the same developers of the efficient mobile browser that’s an alternative to Chrome,Firefox, etc.

Not only does Puffin for Facebook reduce your data usage (a pretty important feature if you’re on a low or limited data plan on your network) and battery consumption (also really important if you’re always mobile), it also claims to load much faster than the native app. That has been one of the major complaints about Facebook’s own app and if you’re watching both data and battery, it’s crucial that the app loads faster and function as you expect it to. It can also show you the monthly data savings you get when you refresh the news feed.

Puffin is able to do so because of its “wicked fast cloud rendering.” And because it uses “wicked efficient data compression” (someone seems to be fond of the word wicked over on Puffin land), the browser is able to consume 80%-90% less data than both the native app and other browsers. And if you’re living in a developing country that has significantly slower Internet, then that should mean a lot.

Of course this data compression also means image and video quality may not be the best, but if you want to view them in hi-res, then you just shake your mobile device. You can download Puffin for Facebook from the Google Play Store for free.

12 COMMENTS

    • I tried installing that on my phone but it while logging in it said something like this app is only for low end devices with slower connections, and asked me to install the regular app instead.

      • Did you install it from the official Google Play store? How long ago did that happen? Because this app was meant for low end devices at first and was only distributed in south-east Asia, but now it is in public access for ant device. (Used it on Galaxy S5 in Europe, would not call it a low end device with a slow connection :D)

      • Yeah it was many months ago and I had installed it from apkmirror. But I just checked in the playstore and it still it’s says incompatible with all my devices.

    • Puffin for Facebook uses less data than Facebook Lite. Additionally, Puffin for Facebook has better user experience (e.g., the images are not chopped into thin slices”).

  1. Seeing how the app uses the fb mobile site, why not just use that instead? I’ve been using fb mobile site for months now and it serves the same purpose.

  2. Freaked out Facebook and they froze my account, would not reinstate it using puffin, uninstalled and spent 20 minutes unfreezing my Facebook account, no thanks

  3. Messages dont open for a few days, just get “something went wrong” when clicking on messages in puffin fb. Anyone else?

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