Seeing as not all Android users need the fully-fledged Facebook app’s bells and whistles, the social network is now working on a slimmed-down version that has a smaller impact on the storage and the resources.
The company pointed out that the Facebook Lite app for Android was specifically created for developing countries where bandwidth matters. That’s only one side of the problem, the other being the phone’s storage. Users cannot install that many apps on older Android devices, and Facebook Lite might provide them access to the social networking without having to make compromises in that area. At 252KB, Facebook Lite will be barely noticeable.
On top of that, the social network’s new Android app will work perfectly fine when using a 2G connection. In case there’s no 3G or 4G in a specific area, but you really need to update your status or check-in, you can now do that using a slower connection. I guess that’s better than not being apple to use the app at all.
This is not exactly the first time the social network rolls out something called Facebook Lite. In 2010, a browser-based trimmed-down app was created, but that didn’t see the light of day for long. For the time being, the Facebook Lite Android app is only available in Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Sudan, South Africa, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, but it should launch globally soon enough.
As an Android and Facebook user, I had the social network’s app installed on my phone, up to one point. More specifically, when the company decided that there should be a main app and a messaging app, I wondered if I really needed any of them. The friends I talk to most often also use Google’s Hangouts or WhatsApp, so whenever I need to share something with them, I turn to one of those two apps. Bandwidth is not a problem for me (I have an unlimited data plan), and neither is storage, even though I only have 16GB. What determined me to uninstall both the main app and Messenger was the huge impact of these apps on my CPU and RAM. With that came a lower battery life and all that jazz. Facebook Lite could make users like myself reconsider using the app on my Android smartphone.
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