App Facebook Lite
Facebook Lite for Android: A Hands-On Look
If you've ever wanted to go on a social media diet, here's your chance. Starting this week, Facebook is making the slimmed-down Facebook Lite app available to Android users in North America, Australia, and Western Europe for the first time.
Facebook first debuted the lightweight version of its main social networking app three years ago to better serve users in developing countries—specifically, people in the parts of the world where a mobile data connection is difficult to access, unreliable, or just painfully slow. The streamlined app is only 1.68 megabytes in size, and downloads as fast as your average cat GIF. It installs on almost any Android phone, and runs well on flaky, low-bandwidth data connections. Critically, it uses less data than big ol' regular Facebook; people who pay by the megabyte can use it to browse their News Feed without racking up crazy fees.
Nigeria, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam were among the nations to get Facebook Lite at launch. Since then, it's been made available in 100 countries across Asia, Latin America, Europe, and Africa.1
Now, Facebook Lite lands in eight more countries—and some of them might even be your country. Facebook's adding the new regions because, well, crappy or expensive data connections turn out to be a universal malady. So now we, too, get to take advantage of Lite's data-saving magic—at least those of us with Android phones, since Facebook Lite isn't available on iOS. (Yet.)
Some Lite Prodding
The first thing you'll notice is that Lite looks as though it's been beamed in from 10 years ago. The default text size is smaller throughout the app. All of your friends are represented by small square avatars instead of big round ones. The buttons for liking and commenting are tiny and monochrome, and the overall visual style is simpler and less cartoonish. The simplicity echoes the design of its sibling Facebook app, Messenger Lite. More blocks, fewer balloons. Flat and clean and fast, like the mobile web used to be.
Facebook has often said that most of the changes in Lite are under the hood. These performance throttles aren't transparent. You can tell the app has been tuned to operate more efficiently, and to feel snappy even on ancient Android hardware.
Whenever you tap something in Lite, either to dive deeper into a post or simply to fave a photo in your timeline, it doesn't respond with animations. The comments window doesn't slide up, the text field doesn't grow larger and invite you to type, and the blue Like thumb doesn't jiggle jollily when you tap it. Animations put more strain on a phone's resources—you may have seen the animation-heavy interfaces slow waay down on great-uncle Joe's Samsung Galaxy S II—so Facebook Lite does away with almost all of them. When you Like a post, the thumb just turns blue. Hold the Like button to choose an alternate reaction, and you get a simple two-by-three pop-up menu of your options. Tap the LOL face, and a LOL face just appears without ceremony.
Facebook Lite for Android: A Hands-On Look
If you've ever wanted to go on a social media diet, here's your chance. Starting this week, Facebook is making the slimmed-down Facebook Lite app available to Android users in North America, Australia, and Western Europe for the first time.
Facebook first debuted the lightweight version of its main social networking app three years ago to better serve users in developing countries—specifically, people in the parts of the world where a mobile data connection is difficult to access, unreliable, or just painfully slow. The streamlined app is only 1.68 megabytes in size, and downloads as fast as your average cat GIF. It installs on almost any Android phone, and runs well on flaky, low-bandwidth data connections. Critically, it uses less data than big ol' regular Facebook; people who pay by the megabyte can use it to browse their News Feed without racking up crazy fees.
Nigeria, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam were among the nations to get Facebook Lite at launch. Since then, it's been made available in 100 countries across Asia, Latin America, Europe, and Africa.1
Now, Facebook Lite lands in eight more countries—and some of them might even be your country. Facebook's adding the new regions because, well, crappy or expensive data connections turn out to be a universal malady. So now we, too, get to take advantage of Lite's data-saving magic—at least those of us with Android phones, since Facebook Lite isn't available on iOS. (Yet.)
Related Posts:
- App Facebook Lite
- Can You Change Your Facebook Business Name
- How To Make Questionnaire In Facebook
- Facebook Your Name
- Facebook Friend Request Icon Disappeared
- Did Facebook Delete My Account
- How Can I Open My Fb Account
- Hotmail Facebook Login
- Google Account Login Sign Up
- G Gmail Sign In
Some Lite Prodding
The first thing you'll notice is that Lite looks as though it's been beamed in from 10 years ago. The default text size is smaller throughout the app. All of your friends are represented by small square avatars instead of big round ones. The buttons for liking and commenting are tiny and monochrome, and the overall visual style is simpler and less cartoonish. The simplicity echoes the design of its sibling Facebook app, Messenger Lite. More blocks, fewer balloons. Flat and clean and fast, like the mobile web used to be.
Facebook has often said that most of the changes in Lite are under the hood. These performance throttles aren't transparent. You can tell the app has been tuned to operate more efficiently, and to feel snappy even on ancient Android hardware.
Whenever you tap something in Lite, either to dive deeper into a post or simply to fave a photo in your timeline, it doesn't respond with animations. The comments window doesn't slide up, the text field doesn't grow larger and invite you to type, and the blue Like thumb doesn't jiggle jollily when you tap it. Animations put more strain on a phone's resources—you may have seen the animation-heavy interfaces slow waay down on great-uncle Joe's Samsung Galaxy S II—so Facebook Lite does away with almost all of them. When you Like a post, the thumb just turns blue. Hold the Like button to choose an alternate reaction, and you get a simple two-by-three pop-up menu of your options. Tap the LOL face, and a LOL face just appears without ceremony.
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Facebook has greatly reduced the distribution of our stories in our readers' newsfeeds and is instead promoting mainstream media sources. When you share to your friends, however, you greatly help distribute our content. Please take a moment and consider sharing this article with your friends and family. Thank you.