Fast for Facebook – a beta Android app that’s far superior than official Facebook app? From ColomboZone

Price: Free

Fast for Facebook is a rich and smooth ICS-inspired Facebook client that provides speed and customizability to your mobile Facebook experience. With the official Facebook app being one of the most criticised infuriating rubbish social network apps in the Google Play Store, its great to see something fresh and different.

Tested on: HTC One X
Content Rating: Low Maturity

AndroidTapp.com Android App Review:

Pros & Cons:

Pros

• Nice ICS themed interface!
• Responsive!
• Customisable experience!

Cons

• Still in beta, sometimes things don’t quite look right.

Features:

The official Facebook app is pretty poor, even with the recent updates. It crashes, it freezes, it takes ages to load your stream. It’s not particularly easy to navigate. Search results can be sporadic and overall I’ve found it to be an overall crappy experience for some time now. You have apps like Friendcaster and Seesmic which perhaps offer better results but I’ve never personally been that convinced, although I appreciate some people swear by them.

It was with some intrigue then that I first started dabbling with Fast For Facebook. Right away,it’s definitely faster than the official Android Facebook app- although that’s not exactly much of an achievement is it? It also looks very good, brandishing strong Ice Cream Sandwich-inspired looks that really make it stand out.

Your new stream is very bold and stands out well against the dark background. The background itself can be customised however you wish, either using the four themes available or even by picking a wallpaper from your own gallery.  You can also adjust performance settings dependent on your own preferences; if you have a snappy bandwidth you can opt for quality, if you rely on a choppy 3G signal then you can choose something that focuses on speed.

The app lets you do pretty much all the things you can do in the official app, although with much more stability (and yes, Fast For Facebook is still only in beta); post status updates, chat, message people and receive private messages, stalk old school friends, check-in, explore groups and pages as well as viewing pictures. Picture galleries themselves look great and the app naturally lets you like, comment, etc.

The design of the app and its navigation means that, when you open a menu, a kind of slick window appears and you can select what you like from this menu. This, in my experience, works very well and means you don’t have to wait long for things to load. I very occasionally found streams to lag a little as the app keeps up, but nothing like the slowness I’ve seen on some social apps, Facebook included. Perhaps the only area where Fast for Facebook’s beta status is apparent is in the occasionally off-centre text when viewing a status update or other posts. Sometimes this can look just look a bit unnatural, and you kind of worry you might have broken something.

These things aside, I’ve found Fast for Facebook to be a really good app to use, and certainly superior to the the official app. Facebook have tried to take some steps towards improving their own app, but I’m sick of how slow and unresponsive it often feels. They’ve now added a camera function and an in-built messaging feature to their app but this feels like attaching saddle bags to an already sluggish donkey.

Fast for Facebook also adds that sweet ICS design so using it in either an ICS launcher or full ICS environment is pretty good too. If you, like me, still use Facebook, Fast for Facebook is a great alternative to the official app, bringing speed and slick design to your Facebook experience that we simply do not see elsewhere. The app is still in beta, so you can be assured it will only improve with updates.

Fast for Facebook – Wheat theme

Fast for Facebook – Supports landscape mode

Fast for Facebook – Change theme

Fast for Facebook – Leaf theme

Fast for Facebook – Stream view

Fast for Facebook – Posting status update

Fast for Facebook – In post view

Fast for Facebook – In-post view 2

Fast for Facebook – Pictures gallery

Fast for Facebook – Pictures gallery 2

Fast for Facebook – Menu shortcuts

Fast for Facebook – Log in page

Fast for Facebook – Options

Usefulness:

Awesome for checking your social life on Facebook, Fast for Facebook lets you do everything you could do in the official app, only in a faster, more reliable and stylish fashion.

Ease of Use:

The navigation could be improved upon a little, especially at first, but it’s otherwise quite intuitive and simple to do all kind of things like search, explore, post messages and photographs, chat and see what friends are up to.

Frequently Used:

This obviously depends on how much of a Facebook fiend you are. I find my family mostly use Facebook over other social networks so I regularly check in to see what they are up to. For other people I’m sure this will be something you use less frequently, and for others still far more frequently.

Interface:

The design is thoroughly Ice Cream Sandwich inspired and looks smart, fresh and slick. I really like the cool little widows that pop up with options when you ask for them, and the speed of the app is great.