Facebook. For some of us it’s kind of a necessary evil. We have friends and family that are on the ubiquitous social network and they are not going anywhere else. Some of us have tried to move on to other social networks (*cough* Google+ *cough*) and while we are enjoying our time there, we still find the need to keep in touch with those that have been left behind. Perhaps this is a good thing, though, because let’s be honest here – who all wants the hot new social network to become inundated with “copy this to your status if you like me” cruft? Not I. If you’re looking for alternatives to the Official Facebook app on Android, then Team2Soft has an excellent application for you – Fast for Facebook.

There were quite a number of people who weren’t too happy after the recent Facebook application updated and added a couple of extra icon shortcuts to the app tray. You know the ones: the generically named “Camera” and “Messenger” apps. This makes for an excellent opportunity to try out something fresh and cleaner, enter stage left Fast for Facebook. For those of you running Ice Cream Sandwich or other Holo-themed ROMs, then Fast will fit right in with the rest of your Android experience. Not only does it have a great look, but it does live up to its namesake – while it’s not super speedy (not super speedy yet; it’s still in Beta) it is faster than the official Facebook app. There are a couple of cosmetic issues that could use some cleaning up – some of the lines are a little on the odd side, and the drop down box in the Search screen looks a little janky – but for such a young app it’s expected to experience a few growing pains.

After you first launch the application and get finished with the Facebook signon and permissions settings, you will be greeted with your news feed in all its gray glory. Don’t worry though, if you don’t like the gray background you can change it in the settings as you’ll see later. The news feed looks okay, you have your customary smallish avatars of who posted what, with everything separated by those previously mentioned odd colored bars. The page scrolls quickly and effortlessly, which is appreciated. Probably one of my only issues with the news feed is that it’s not possible to see where the posts were made. For example: was it posted on somebody else’s wall and showing up on my page?

Selecting a post pops up a nice detail window where you can open up and view comments made on that post, as well as add your own comment. If the post doesn’t contain a whole lot of text, be prepared for a rather large wall of white. It would be nice if the text size were a little larger, to perhaps fill in the emptiness of many posts. You can fill that space with the comments, of course, but it might not be a bad idea to have larger text here in either case. Below the comments section you will find icons to “Repost”, “Like” and add your “Comment”. Some will also contain another icon to take you to a web browser to view the post – usually either an image or a link to another webpage.

Along the top of the screen are the various activities that can be done in Fast for Facebook. The first icon is the Settings menu (which, perhaps, should be at the top right instead of the top left). Next are the Messenger, Search, Friends, Photos and Refresh buttons. The Settings menu is where you can view your own profile, change the background of the app from drab gray to either an included theme or an image from your gallery, change how images are downloaded for performance and also set up a security PIN code to prevent unwanted access. In addition to the general settings, this menu also is where you can access any Facebook Groups that you belong to.

Next up is the Messenger screen. I honestly have no use for Facebook Chat so I have no idea how well it works with this application. I can say that it does bring up a list of your Facebook friends along with a status indicator that shows whether or not they are available for chat. When you select a friend to chat with a text box pops up on the bottom right of the screen to type in. Again, I will assume that it works as expected. The next screen is the Search screen, it’s pretty self explanatory, really. As is the Friends screen, it’s just a quick access view to bring up a friends profile page. I don’t know that I have any friends with cover photos, so do not know if that is shown or not. There is a place for one, however, as the top half of the page is that lovely blank white canvas. The final icon apart from the refresh button brings up your Photo galleries, which presents you with a two column grid of images. Tapping on any gallery pulls up a near full screen photo, with a filmstrip of images along the top of the page that you can click through.

Adding new content is pretty simple as well, from the main page you might have noticed three icons along the bottom of the page. The first is a large “Plus”, which pops open another submenu for Check-in, Status Update, Camera, Image and Message. They all work as expected, although for me the Camera did not use the rear camera on my phone and instead opted to utilize the front facing camera. I don’t know if it thought that I need to add a few more “myspace poses” to my profile or if it’s a bug in the app or my ROM. One thing that the developers do promote with the camera is that it’s possible to continuously add new photos, so I assume that the camera screen will stay active once you’ve uploaded your new images.

The last two icons on the bottom are there to read and reply to your Facebook messages, as well as to check your notifications. Each brings up a small window with the user’s profile picture of the person you’re messaging or who sent you some request in Farmville or whatever they’ve done.

What are my final thoughts on Fast for Facebook? I really do like the application a lot and find myself using it more and more as time goes by. That said, some of the quirkiness keeps me from totally replacing the official app (or Friendcaster, for that matter). I do plan on keeping it installed, if only to continue to monitor its progress to see how the developers are coming along. It’s a free download, so it can’t hurt to give it a go, and it’s a lot lighter weight than a few of the other alternatives.

































Fast for Facebook is available on the Google Play Store.

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