{"id":652152,"date":"2013-04-12T15:05:57","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T19:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=630663"},"modified":"2013-04-12T15:05:57","modified_gmt":"2013-04-12T19:05:57","slug":"first-impressions-of-facebook-home-for-android-are-a-surprising-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/652152","title":{"rendered":"First impressions of Facebook Home for Android are a surprising \u201cLike\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Color me surprised: Facebook Home is actually a well designed, slick piece of software. <a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=com.facebook.home\">The launcher became available in the Google Play store<\/a> on Friday afternoon, as expected, and I installed it on my Galaxy Note 2, which is one of five Android phones that initially support the app. Prior to Facebook Home availability, <a href=\"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/2013\/04\/12\/facebook-messenger-update-brings-chat-heads-to-most-android-phones\/\">I had installed the updated Facebook Messenger app<\/a> as well, finding it to be easy to use and filled with some nice features.<\/p>\n<p>In no particular order, here are my first impressions of Facebook Home:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"line-height:13px;\">Having news feed updates and photos on the lock screen almost compel you to double-tap and &#8220;Like&#8221; these items. There&#8217;s simply no barrier between you and the content and I found myself swiping and liking far more than I usually do. (Mission accomplished, Facebook.) I can zip through my news feed very quickly with Facebook Home.<\/span><\/li>\n<li>On the 5.5-inch display of the Note 2, some pictures look like 8-bit .BMP files but that&#8217;s not the software&#8217;s fault. It&#8217;s past time for some phone upgrades with better cameras for some of my friends!<\/li>\n<li>Upon installing Facebook Home, Google Play noted that no additional permissions are required to use the app. That means <a href=\"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/2013\/04\/05\/in-response-to-questions-about-privacy-at-home-facebook-says-users-shouldnt-worry\/\">Facebook made good on its permissions promise of last week<\/a>. It also means that whatever permissions you allowed in Facebook carry over to Facebook Home.<\/li>\n<li>The launcher is very responsive; no less so than the native TouchWiz on my Note 2 or compared to other third-party launchers such as Apex or Nova.<\/li>\n<li>The PIN security I have set on my Note 2 still works with Facebook Home.<\/li>\n<li>Chat Heads aren&#8217;t bothering me as much as I though they would, although I&#8217;ve only had a pair on screen at the same time. It&#8217;s easy to remove them in the settings or you can drag them to the bottom of the display to hide them.<\/li>\n<li>Native Facebook notifications look outstanding on the Home screen. Unfortunately, all other notifications still appear in Android&#8217;s notification bar, which isn&#8217;t viewable from the Facebook Home screen by default; you can change this in the settings. The HTC First, however &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/2013\/04\/09\/htc-first-and-my-last-with-facebook-home\/\">as reviewed by my colleague Om<\/a> &#8212; does integrate system notifications on the Home screen.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s simple to rid your Android of the Facebook Home screen and go back to your phone&#8217;s native launcher.<\/li>\n<li>The overall design is super clean and will bring what I think is the best Facebook experience to Android yet. It&#8217;s actually shame if this doesn&#8217;t come to iOS; though I don&#8217;t think it will, at least not in this form.<\/li>\n<li>This may have been part of Messenger prior, but I really like the Voice Memo function after testing it out with a few folks. You simply tap and hold a record button, speak aloud your message, let go of the button and send it. The recipient will get an audio file that plays back right in their Messenger app.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So will I keep Facebook Home? The answer is a definite <em>maybe<\/em>, which is different from when the software launched. At the time, I said I wouldn&#8217;t likely be using it. However, I don&#8217;t use that many widgets on my Android phone &#8212; if you do, you won&#8217;t want this launcher &#8212; and I am a Facebook user. Perhaps Facebook has found a home on my phone after all; at least until Google Now expands to become a launcher and information center on its own.<\/p>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/stats.wordpress.com\/b.gif?host=gigaom.com&#038;blog=14960843&#038;%23038;post=630663&#038;%23038;subd=gigaom2&#038;%23038;ref=&#038;%23038;feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/pubads.g.doubleclick.net\/gampad\/jump?iu=\/1008864\/GigaOM_RSS_300x250&#038;sz=300x250&#038;%23038;c=893203\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/pubads.g.doubleclick.net\/gampad\/ad?iu=\/1008864\/GigaOM_RSS_300x250&#038;sz=300x250&#038;%23038;c=893203\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:<\/strong><br \/>Subscriber content. <a href=\"http:\/\/pro.gigaom.com\/?utm_source=mobile&#038;utm_medium=editorial&#038;utm_campaign=auto3&#038;utm_term=630663+first-impressions-of-facebook-home-for-android-are-a-surprising-like&#038;utm_content=kevintofel\">Sign up for a free trial<\/a>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/pro.gigaom.com\/2013\/01\/mobile-fourth-quarter-2012-analysis\/?utm_source=mobile&#038;utm_medium=editorial&#038;utm_campaign=auto3&#038;utm_term=630663+first-impressions-of-facebook-home-for-android-are-a-surprising-like&#038;utm_content=kevintofel\">The fourth quarter of 2012 in mobile<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/pro.gigaom.com\/2012\/12\/the-converged-mobile-messaging-market-analysis-and-forecast\/?utm_source=mobile&#038;utm_medium=editorial&#038;utm_campaign=auto3&#038;utm_term=630663+first-impressions-of-facebook-home-for-android-are-a-surprising-like&#038;utm_content=kevintofel\">Forecast: the converged mobile messaging market<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a 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The launcher became available in the Google Play store on Friday afternoon, as expected, and I installed it on my Galaxy Note 2, which is one of five Android phones that initially support the app. Prior to Facebook Home availability, I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-652152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}