Facebook Finally Gets Around to Releasing That Android App

What have there been, like, three whole iPhone versions? Android's late official Facebook app has shown its iconic little face in the App Market and it's actually sort of surprising.

Instead of just porting over the interface or at least the interface concept from the recently-released Facebook 3.0 for the iPhone, they've given us an Android-specific UI. Not that it's particularly Android-y; it's just different. The front page panels on the iPhone app have been replaced with a simple view of your feed, while the rest of the functions come by way of menu-accessible shortcuts, which require pressing a hard button.

Those other features include direct photo uploads, big fat "Like" buttons and, though I couldn't get this one working, a phonebook function that gives you instant access to 125 of you chosen friends' phone numbers. It's a slightly less intuitive approach than the iPhone app or even to a certain extent the web interface, but it's a far sight better than any of the third-party apps already in the market, many of which tried to pass themselves off as official, and some of which even had a nonzero (!) price. Facebook's official app, luckily, is free, and in the market now.

UPDATE: So, Phandroid's noticed a few odd things about this app: Despite the developer being listed in the Market as "Facebook," the developer's email address is a suspicious Facebook.Android@gmail.com, and the associated Facebook app-as in, for the website-says it was not developed by Google. Could we have an impostor here? That would explain the new design philosophy, and the lack of a few major features (messages, anyone?), but that the fact that it is a fairly polished app.

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Source: Smokie's Writting Pad