Facebook Home Review

Introduction

At times, it can be quite contagious – really! Like seriously, it’s so addictive that some of us are compelled to constantly check it every 5 minutes or so. So what are we talking about? Facebook people, Facebook! Now that the social networking giant is taking a proactive role in giving us the best mobile experience with Facebook Home, you’d think they would have the correct recipe to whip up something that’s covering the complete package. In our ever growing connectedness society, social networking has been the driving force in our insatiable quest to continuously be in the loop with friends and family alike. Therefore, the question that remains is whether or not Facebook Home can actually deliver the goods on that promise.

Facebook Home – the new lock/home screen

Smartphone companies have done stellar work with their respective customized Android experiences, some better than others, but with this undertaking, Facebook is hoping that you’ll ditch your phone’s default lock/home screen in favor for its own home brewed Facebook Home experience. Not surprisingly, they’ve taken a new dynamic approach in how we view the lock screen – and we have to admit, it’s pretty looking. Essentially, Facebook Home aggregates content from your news feed, but instead of the scrollable list we’re familiar seeing with the regular app, Facebook Home puts it in this snazzy looking slideshow presentation. Specifically, moving images occupy the entire interface – with the associated status post layered on top of it. On one hand, it might seem as though it’s an in-your-face kind of approach, but the way content is presented is subtle. And when it comes down to it, the simplicity of the cover feed will delight most users.

Needless to say, we definitely appreciate this kind of approach, since we’re able to manually go through posts by swiping left/right. Adding some usefulness, we’re given access to a few functions directly from Facebook Home – such as liking something by double tapping on a post, commenting, and seeing the full-sized image of a photo by long pressing. Indeed, we’re grateful to see these functions, but we were hoping to see something more comprehensive. For example, in order to check-in to a place, post a status, or upload a photo, we’re still required to go through the usual Facebook app for that.

Hopefully, we’ll see more of those functions integrated into the Facebook Home lock screen with future updates. For now, though, Facebook Home is basically a pretty aggregator for our news feed. However, after several days of scoping it out, we soon realize that it begins to get stale, and soon after, we find ourselves going back to the usual app – mainly because we’re able to see more of our news feed simultaneously with its scrollable list.


With the launcher, a circular sized image of our Facebook profile photo is shown beneath the bottom portion of the Facebook Home UI. From here, we can drag our photo left, up, or right, which respectively corresponds to launching Facebook Messenger, the apps panel, and the last used app. Although it’s something that some of us might overlook, Facebook Home employs distinctive tapping sounds for various things – like the tone that’s used when we double tap on a post to like it.



Difference between Facebook Home for the HTC First & downloadable app

Even though we’re seeing Facebook Home being trickled down to many of today’s popular Android smartphones, the HTC First with its out of the box Facebook Home experience is treated to one particular feature that the downloadable app doesn’t offer to other smartphones. To be specific, it’ll handle notifications and show them directly in the cover feed. So whether it’s a Gmail notification, someone liking your Facebook post, or a missed phone call, the HTC First’s Facebook Home experience will handle them. Certainly, it’s nice that we can disregard notifications individually by swiping them left/right, but it would’ve been extra useful to have a way to disregard them all – just like what we’re given with the standard Android notifications panel. Additionally, it’s not as practical with its implementation, seeing that we can’t preview them like we would with regular Android.

Interestingly enough, for things like the Facebook Messenger app on the HTC First, it’ll populate regular text message conversations too – in addition to our Facebook ones. So yeah, it’s nice that it handles that as well, which is particularly useful for those who prefer using Facebook Messenger than your ordinary text messaging means.

It doesn’t discriminate in what it shows & privacy

As much as we like Facebook’s new way of redoing the news feed, we know that there’s just one major concern after spending a great deal of time with it – Facebook Home simply doesn’t discriminate what it shows. What do we mean by that? Well, there’s no way to regulate (for now) what Facebook Home will show in the cover feed. Worse yet, if you have one of those Facebook friends that love to post provocative photos or inappropriate jokes, you’ll be shocked to maybe see it the moment you turn on your device. In fact, Grandma might be horrified in what she might perhaps see upon turning it on. And of course, you’ll need to come up with some good excuses if your boss somehow sees something like that.

Another concern that we have with Facebook Home is centered around privacy. Specifically, if you leave your phone out in the open, where anyone can check it out, they can immediately check out and read all of the posts in your cover feed. Even if you put up a lock of some kind, whether it’s a pattern one or face unlock, they can still access the cover feed. It’s only when we try to do something else, like launching an app, that the phone will ask us to provide the pertinent unlock to gain access to the handset.

Chat Heads

Considering that friends are more likely to respond to Facebook messages faster than your typical SMS, Facebook Home dishes up a new feature with Facebook Messenger. Rather than launching the Messenger to see an overview of all your conversations, we now have access to Chat Heads. Yes people, you heard that right, Chat Heads! When you get an incoming Facebook message, a chat head will appear in the UI – it’s actually layered on top of everything, which is great since we have access to those conversations at any point. Even better, we can place the chat heads anywhere around the edge of the UI. For those wondering, Chat Heads will automatically snap to the edges if you try and place it somewhere in the wide open space. Knowing that Chat Heads have all the functionality associated with Facebook Messenger, it’s wonderful we can also send photos and record audio from directly within our Chat Head conversation.



Conclusion

Like we said, Facebook Home’s new dynamic approach is compelling at first, but after checking it out for some time, we don’t find it wholesome enough to use day in, day out. Frankly, you’ll need to invest a lot more time going through Facebook Home’s cover feed – whereas with the usual Facebook app, we can get through a great deal amount of content in a shorter amount of time, thanks to its more concise scrollable listing. Swiping away in the cover feed is tiresome, so that’s why we find ourselves increasingly relying on the usual app. Unfortunately, even with the HTC First, the Facebook app remains largely untouched. In fact, it’s the same old experience as before, which is a bummer considering it’s THE Facebook phone. Nevertheless, we’re hoping that Facebook will focus on building up Facebook Home so we can ditch the app entirely.

Pros: