Facebook Releases Rewritten and Much Faster iPhone App

App Store FacebookFacebook has released a completely rewritten iOS app that is significantly faster than the prior version. With more and more Facebook users accessing the social network via mobile, the company views having a fast mobile app as increasingly essential. News that the update was forthcoming was first reported back in June.

With the updated version, Facebook's engineers have dumped the HTML5-based app and rebuilt it using Objective-C programming to make it perform more like a native iOS app. From All Things D:

“People have different expectations when it comes to using Facebook for iOS,” Mick Johnson, Facebook iOS mobile product manager, told me in an interview this morning. “They expect a level of performance and speed that just wasn’t there.”

Johnson says that the largest pain points — scrolling through the feed, photos and loading the app — will all be much faster, by a factor of three. Also, Facebook mobile developers working on the three separate iOS apps — Facebook, Camera and Messenger — all all now sharing a code base with each other, so Messenger and Camera are actually running inside of the proper Facebook app, bringing many of those features to Facebook for iOS. (As a bonus, a shared code base means faster development cycles, so we’ll probably see improvements sooner.)

Facebook for iPhone is available free via the App Store. [Direct Link]

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Top Rated Comments

patrickowtf Avatar
171 months ago
omg finally
Score: 83 Votes (Like | Disagree)
joelisfar Avatar
171 months ago
they should've done this back when it was Harvard-only.
Score: 47 Votes (Like | Disagree)
keysofanxiety Avatar
171 months ago
I can confirm this, guys! Just trying it out now.

Now I can see photos of all my friends' food 3 times quicker! I'm so happy. :rolleyes:
Score: 39 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Caliber26 Avatar
171 months ago
first? It seems snappier :-)
Oh, please make sure to do a screen cap and email it to your mother. She will be SOOOO effin proud that you FINALLY posted first on an online forum.
Score: 30 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ajcadoo Avatar
171 months ago
This is a year overdue.
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)
fel10 Avatar
171 months ago
About time. The old FB app was horrendous.
Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree)