8 Reasons To Use Friendcaster For Facebook And Ditch The Official App (Android)

 
Facebook has been getting a lot of flak for its Facebook App for Android from a long time now . Not only is it buggy and slow , every update that has been released creates more problems .
On the wake of Facebook’s IPO, Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg informed that they will be concentrating more on mobile devices . But with the continuing under-performance of the official app , one must start looking at alternatives if not already .
Though there have been improvements in the User Interface recently , the whole experience is woefully buggy .

After using both the apps (Friendcaster and Official FB app) and testing it thoroughly I have listed 10 reasons for ditching the Official App for Friendcaster .

• Initial Start-up Time : It took a painfully long 9 secs to get anything on the screen after tapping on the icon whereas Friendcaster took less than 3 secs to start-up.
• Notification : This took around 10 secs to load while it took less than a second to load in FriendCaster .
• Messages : Messages  took around 8 secs to load and 2 secs compared to FriendCaster
• Profile Pages : This was the longest wait ever . My profile page took over 14 secs ! to load whereas it took only 3 secs to open in Friendcaster.
• Facebook Pages : Facebook pages are better organised in the official app but takes around 11 secs to open compared to 4 secs in Friendcaster .
• Photos : Opening a photograph took around 12 secs in the Official app and it took less than half of that using Friendcaster .
• Push Notifications : This is where Friendcaster is clearly a winner . The user interface and speed of the notification is amazingly brillliant . I have used the Official app for a long time now , and I have noticed that push notification is pathetic , and most often redundant .
• User Experience : The official Facebook App has a very iPhone feel to it . Like most of the other apps it just is another iPhone clone . Friendcaster makes use of the Andoid User design guidelines ,making the app much faster and easier to flip through .

What’s really intriguing me is the fact that Facebook has access to  every inch of their servers and internal API’s but still a third party developer is making faster and better application .

Note : These results are based on the tests made under the following parameters.

1. Device : Lg Optimus One
2. OS : Android 2.2.2 (Froyo)
3. Connection : 2G at (15-25kbps)  

[Original Post By Anish Hegde @ www.bigbangtechie.wordpress.com]

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