Facebook iOS app v.5.0 is faster than ever

[Scubie67]

Facebook has updated its iPhone and iPad application, now in version 5.0. At first glance, the new features are few but under the hood, the change is more radical, since the social network has abandoned in favor of HTML5 Objective C. It promises higher performance twice.

Posted Thursday night, the version 5.0 of the Facebook application for iPhone and iPad does not destabilize: apart from a few cosmetic changes, the features are more or less equivalent to those of previous editions, and an option such as sharing a post is still lacking. However, this update is important for the social network: because the transition to 100% native application promises performance up to two times higher than previously reported.

So far, Facebook for iOS was essentially a mobile Web application done in HTML5, leaning against a house framework and encapsulated within a native application to be distributed on the App Store. The network has finally changed its tune, and took advantage of completely by re-developing its software in Objective-C, the native language interpreted by iOS.

"Although using Web technology has enabled us to support more than 500 million people using Facebook over 7,000 managed devices, we realized that when coming around platforms like iOS, people wanted to experience fast and reliable application," says Jonathan Dann, responsible for the development of mobile products.

Facebook for iOS v.5.0 thus promises opening pictures much faster, instant access to notifications and much more fluid scrolling the Timeline.

With this transition to native network explains, for example to manage resources more thinly, so that the interface elements and navigation - are those on which measures the responsiveness - are always in the foreground, while other less critical tasks are performed in the background.

This transition finally allows Facebook to unify the experience between the different modules that compose the application, such as instant messaging, previously called Objective-C in the middle of a service delivered in the form of web app. Still here it remains to be seen if the changes will be well received by end users, and how this decision will affect future developments, or agility on the implementation of future innovations.

[Abbie]

Since some users complained about the slowness of this popular application, Mark Zuckerberg and his team decided to take action on the matter. Zuckerberg promises that this new version has solved any problem of slowness and lack of functionality compared to previous versions. Sure, after some user feedback working with it on their iPhones and iPads, we will come to know how much changes are made.