New Facebook for iOS: Same Coat of Paint, Better Engine [REVIEW]

Facebook released an overhauled version of its iOS app Thursday that promises to offer a better, faster, more native experience to users.

Mobile is crucial to Facebook's development. The social network knows its future depends on having a strong mobile presence. That means having mobile users want to use its app — and having a way to derive revenue from mobile ad units.

The main problem has been that for the last 18 months, the flagship Facebook mobile experience — Facebook for iOS — has become a burden for many users. I frequently hear friends, family members and colleagues complain about how poor its user experience is.

None of this was news to Facebook. In the lead-up to Facebook's IPO, CEO Mark Zuckerberg vowed that fixing Facebook's mobile apps was a top priority.

In May, Facebook released a Facebook Camera app for iOS. The app was intended to showcase that Facebook could do better. Developed before the acquisition of Instagram, the Facebook Camera app was faster and more robust than its big brother.

In June, word that Facebook for iOS would get a native rewrite was leaked to The New York Times.

That brings us to today. The new app is out. We've had time to use and abuse it. The app is certainly faster — but are the improvements enough to keep users addicted to Facebook on their phones?

Same Look, New Feel

On the outside, the app doesn't look demonstrably different from previous versions of Facebook for iOS. The real changes are to the core code within the application itself.

Facebook for iOS is no longer a wrapper around an HTML5 mobile web view, it's written in Objective-C — iOS's native codebase.

This has a huge impact on the app's overall responsiveness. The app loads faster, is easier to navigate and doesn't pause when trying to load more news items or go to a different user page.

On the iPad, there are a few more visual differences. Facebook Timeline is finally working with Facebook for iPad. The iPad app finally feels like a real app. In the past, the app still felt a bit disjointed — as if it had been lobbed on at the last minute.

That's probably because it was. Facebook 5.0 for iOS is the first version that feels like a solid iPad app.

One of the best parts of the new native code base is the ability to see updates to your newsfeed in real time. New stories arrive and the user is able to see how many new stories exist above the timeline. Tapping the alert displays the new stories.

Likes and comments appear more seamlessly too. Moreover, notifications are easy to access and also arrive in real-time.

Putting Secondary Apps to Good Use

When the the Facebook Camera app was released, I questioned why it was a separate app and not integrated directly into Facebook for iOS app.

Sure, the photo experience – especially when viewing full-screen photos, was fantastic — and the uploader was extremely fast — but the fact that it was a separate app struck me as lazy and silly.

Fortunately, Facebook has integrated the code from Facebook Camera into Facebook for iOS. That means that the same photo display features, the same quick uploads and the same ease in tagging are all in the main app.

Facebook also took its Facebook Messenger app and integrated its core code into Facebook for iOS. Users can still use the stand-alone Messenger app for messaging, but the speed of the experience and the way notifications and location alerts work is now identical.

This is a great move. At some point, Facebook might need to look to deprecate the ancillary apps, but for the time being, having the same code live in two places is smart.

Will This Scale?

My big questions with Facebook — not just for iOS, but for mobile in general — is how does it scale? Mobile ad units and promoted stories are a start at deriving revenue, but that's not a long-term solution.

Although the Facebook mobile experience offers almost everything of the desktop experience, the fact remains that the service itself was designed in a time before mobile.

That's why Instagram is so important. It's one of the best examples of how a mobile-first social network can work and can work in a unique way.

The new codebase for Facebook for iOS is great — and I love that the app is faster. Still, I can't help but think that the entire design of the app might need to be re-designed not to port the Facebook experience to the phone, but to design it around the way mobile users actually engage with the service.

To me, that's what will decide if Facebook succeeds in its transition to mobile: Will it offer the right experience for users. Time will tell.

What do you think of Facebook for iOS? Are the speed improvements enough? Let us know in the comments.