Facebook for Android is your social networking brought to life.Stay connected to friends with status updates, photos, links, media, messages and more. Facebook for Android brings the core necessities of Facebook to your Android, maintaining, cultivating and facilitating your caring and your sharing. 

Clicking the Facebook icon takes you to the sign-up page which is straight forward requiring only your email address and password to get started and in addition, you can sign up for a Facebook account should you not already have one.

Unlike some devices the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc was very quick to load without any hesitation the Facebook for Android app. On starting up Facebook for Android you are presented with the the following screen to choose the option best suited for your Facebook.

To get the most from Facebook for Android on your phone you can place the Facebook widget and Facebook Phonebook Live Folder on your home screen.

Once you have clicked finish you are presented with the home screen for Facebook for Android. The default home screen is my favourite option that exists in Facebook for Android. I find it most essential, that there is a ‘home’ for my services and that they can be accessed via this easy route without being buried knee deep in separate folders, sub-folders or settings. It resembles very familiar that of Apple’s iPhone iOS Facebook app, but in the Android device it has made use of the extra screen size to add the most recent photos as a scrolling film stream beneath the main home screen icons. Touching the top blue bar with the header ‘Facebook’ will take you back to the Facebook for Android home screen from whatever service you were in from those listed in the screenshot below. . In addition, the bottom of the screen shows your most recent notifications that you have received.

Touching the notification bar opens the notifications screen – a very quick way to view what recent action has been taken on your posts

Click News Feed and you are taken directly into your News Feed where you can read all your updates and information from friends. If they have a picture added to their account you will see it and any images or media are also clearly shown.  I am not such a fan of the grey font which is used for some of the messaging as I feel a black font just says it all. Access to media and images was very fast with photos for example opening instantaneously on choosing a friends album.The same applies to internet links and youtube links. You can zoom into an image via (-) and (+) icons and go through the photo stream via the left and right arrows (I would have preferred to be able to just swipe pictures from one to the next rather than the arrow method) and from this same screen you can add a comment but you can not like it. To like an image you would need to click on the post itself and not the album or picture that is presented in the post. I do not see why you do not or can not get the option to like an image or album at the same point or access page that you go to to add a comment.

Opening a youtube link gives you the option to do so via the browser or via the YouTube application and at this point, if it is the first time for this action, Facebook for Android asks you which you wish to choose as the default action for when you come across this type of media again. Choosing youtube you can view the media in portrait in a small boxed screen which takes up a third of the screen and lists additional information about the video allowing you to subscribe, like, etc. Tilting the screen landscape and the video goes full screen with all excess information hidden.  The sound quality is superb and I have not had a complaint to make about videos, YouTube, the Internet or how it all works in conjunction with the Facebook for Android application. Choosing the back-arrow from whatever application you travelled to, to view the video takes you back to your Facebook feed and the position you were in before you viewed the video.

Clicking on an individual user gives you access to their full Facebook stream, profile and photos, and at this point you can post directly on their wall.

Choosing search allows you to search in friends or everyone for particular individuals. In this listing you are also shown images which is helpful if you are trying to identify someone.

Chat option shows you at a glance who is available and who is not and you can choose to turn the service off and so make yourself offline.

As this version of Facebook for Android was released prior to Skype for Facebook, we are not sure when or how the new Skype service will be incorporated into this Facebook for Android application. But, if it is as well implemented as the other services and functions then it will continue to receive A+++

The keypad is easy to use and was clearly defined and I love the option to hide the keypad.  Other manufacturers need to take note here that sometimes you want to go back, or decide you do not want to reply to something right there right now and so need the opportunity to hide the keypad when they do not need to use.

Facebook for Android has several options under its settings to facilitate your Facebook experience. such as refresh interval, notifications and more.

I have found the Facebook for Android experience nothing less than wonderful.  It is an easy to use application. Pre-installed so you can get started directly with no scurrying around into Shops, Stores or Markets. The application made full use of the screen size available to it and the outside services of Youtube, Media and Internet have been excellently implemented.  The availability of a widget can facilitate your social life even more so, if you enjoy the continued online participation. I am of the ‘one app one function’ school so I employ the option to check Facebook when I have the time or when I choose to, rather than updates being pushed to me immediately on my home screen.

Since writing this review I have just checked in the Market Place and I have seen that there is a new version of Facebook for Android v 1.6.1 2.92MB. This version allows me to manage the Pages for which I am admin and also the to view the pages I have added and their Facebook stream in a dedicated area as well as check friends requests and in addition you can tag pages in status updates using “@”

What do you think of Sony Ericsson’s implementation of ‘Facebook Inside Xperia?

Tags: android, social networking/social media

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 3rd, 2011 at 13:37 and is filed under Android, News, Social Media, Sony Ericsson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.