Facebook Lite:
Facebook has announced a new Android app called Facebook Lite, which is a version of Facebook built from scratch to work smoothly with poor data connections and low-end phones. It’s an app for the entire world, namely developing countries where data connectivity is hard to come by.
But as we all know, Facebook knows a lot of information about you, and their Android app is one of the ways they collect your data. Is the Facebook Lite app any better?Facebook Privacy: 25 Things The Social Network Knows About You Facebook Privacy: 25 Things The Social Network Knows About You Facebook knows a surprising amount about us – information we willingly volunteer. From that information you can be slotted into a demographic, your "likes" recorded and relationships monitored. Here are 25 things Facebook knows about... Read More
What about the general user experience? Would it ever be worth it for someone with a stable and fast Internet connection to download Facebook Lite?
Let’s take an in-depth look at this app and answer all of those questions.
Benefits of Facebook Lite
As a download, Facebook Lite is under 1MB, and once installed, it takes up 2.82MB of space on my device. Compare that to the amount of space regular Facebook takes up, which is 195MB. This is not an insubstantial difference.
Additionally, Facebook Lite doesn’t preload photos in the way that Facebook does. Instead, it downloads low-res versions of photos that you can scroll through in your timeline, and if you actually tap on one, then it will download the higher resolution version.
Likewise, when uploading photos, the images are compressed and sent in the background so that the user doesn’t have to stare at an uploading screen for minutes at a time.
User Interface
Facebook Lite isn’t just a wrapper for the mobile website — it’s a completely redesigned app. The status posting feature has been moved up into the top of the app (rather than a floating button in the bottom right), which means that the search bar has been shrunk down into a button.
In all honesty, the layout isn’t worse; it’s just different. You still have the same basic tabs — News Feed, Friends Requests, Messages, Notifications, Search, and Options — you just can’t swipe between them; you have to tap them.
There is generally bigger text and buttons, which is intended for devices with low resolution screens. It still has a semi-modern look with white cards over a grey background — there’s just no real shading effect behind them.
In the notification panel below, you can see that the Lite version doesn’t feature the profile photos of anyone, instead opting for small, low-res images to denote whether someone liked or commented on something. The only thing a bit off is that there’s no border between the notifications and the sides of the screen, making it feel squished.
Scrolling through the Lite app is noticeably jerkier than scrolling through regular Facebook. It’s clear that they made some cuts to allow it to function properly on devices with low RAM and low CPU power. Other “features” have been removed, like Facebook’s in-app browser that many people disable anyway.How To Turn Off Facebook's In-App Browser & More Facebook Productivity Tips How To Turn Off Facebook's In-App Browser & More Facebook Productivity Tips Facebook's in-app browser is detrimental to your productivity. I'll show you how to make Facebook open links in your external browser and how to improve your News Feed reading habits.
All in all, the app is certainly usable, if a bit less smooth than the regular Facebook app.
Security and Privacy
Facebook definitely loves your information, and you want to be sure that they’re not just handing it out to everyone. Well for starters, they have an online tool so you can verify your privacy settings, but once you’ve done that, it’s not a bad idea to see what permissions that mobile app has on your device.Protect Yourself With Facebook's Privacy Check-up Tool Protect Yourself With Facebook's Privacy Check-up Tool Facebook has a privacy problem. It's no secret. You hear stories about that every other day. So to help users understand their settings better, Facebook has released a new tool called Privacy Check-up. Read More
Some people consider the regular Facebook application’s permissions to be a bit invasive. You can see all of those below.
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