Interface
The interface of the Facebook Windows Phone strongly resembles that of other Facebook mobile apps: The lined button at top left slides out a dark gray left-side panel, which lets you switch among your profile, news feed, messages, places, events, friends, and groups. At the bottom of this list are Apps and Settings. As in the other mobile Facebook apps (and on the website itself), along the top are buttons for Friend requests, Messages, and that Earth-shaped icon for Notifications. Swiping left-to-right moves you through these modes, as well as simply tapping the icons.
You can search from atop the left-side menu, and a top-right button takes you to your recent chats and favorite friends. The new app lets you extend its footprint on your phone: You can make start screen live tiles for subsections such as Messages, Nearby, Events, and Groups.
One interface-related testing note is that the app performed snappily on both phones observed for this review. No longer can the charge of slow performance be leveled at Facebook for Windows Phone the way it was in earlier versions.
News Feed
A gear icon next to the News Feed choice in the left-side control panel lets you decide whether you want to just show top stories or all recent stories. One awesome feature that was missing in the iPhone Facebook app for a long time is the simple ability to delete a post of your own. But the iOS app has surpassed this capability, now letting you adjust the privacy setting for a post—public, friends of friends, friends only, and so on.
The iOS app, but not the Windows Phone app also lets you hide others’ as well as your own posts from your timeline. Neither goes the next step, letting you change how many updates you see from a particular user, as you can on the website. One cool interface touch the app does have is “shake to refresh.” You can still drag down the screen to refresh or simply tap a refresh icon, too.
Chat
Just as on the Facebook website, you’ll see the Messages button atop the screen and in the left panel menu. The chat interface works pretty much the same way as it does in any other mobile Facebook app: You get a list of your current chats, and a plus sign button to start new ones. As I already mentioned, you can set Facebook for Windows Phone to drop down a notification and add a number to the app’s live tile to let you know you have messages waiting.
One bummer is that you don’t get “stickers”—those big bloopy emoticons. Not only that, but I couldn’t use the simpler, colorful emoticons, either, with a message saying “We’re sorry. We don’t currently support the colorful emoticon you wish to use in this message.” Another frill you don’t get is Facebook’s nifty Chat Heads—small circles filled with your pal’s head image that float over whatever else is on the phone.
Photos
You can do most anything with photos that you can in any other app—including tagging faces and, commenting. As is expected with any app that deals with photos these days, you can swipe back and forth through all an album’s constituent photos.
When it comes to taking new pictures, you tap the camera button at the bottom of your news feed or profile page, and then you’ll see one of the simplest interfaces in history—just two simple text options: take photo, and add. You can switch between front and back cameras and turn flash on and off before snapping. And before you actually post a photo, you can add location, set the privacy level, and add Friends.
Note I didn’t say “tag”—since you can only add the fact that the photo is “with” a friend. You can actually face tag after you post, though. The Android and iPhone Facebook apps let you face tag before posting, and the latter goes way beyond the other by offering actual photo editing tools like cropping, brightness, and filter effects.
Just the Basics
The Facebook for Windows Phone app covers all the essentials required for happy Facebooking. Its news feed, posting, photo, and messaging features are all perfectly satisfactory. But the app still trails its iOS and Android kin in some of the niceties, such as Chat Heads, Stickers, and photo filters. The fact that the app performs well, makes nice use of touch and shake, and offers some nice notification options speaks well for it. As Windows Phone grows its market share, I think we can look forward to all the missing pieces finding their way into the app, and for now, it’s a no-brainer, must-install for the Facebooking Windows Phone user.
