Good news for those of you out there who are sick of Facebook’s app but actually still want to use Facebook: there’s another way. oStream, an open beta release by an XDA forum member, provides a more streamlined version of Facebook’s app. The app mostly has the same feel as Facebook except for the fact that it doesn’t start to lag every few seconds.
Directly from forum member oStream, here are some of the selling points:
- “Instantly available because when you open oStream, your news feed appears instantly. No loading times. No delays.”
- “Always available. You are in a place with no internet connection. You want to check your notifications: oStream will show you the ones that existed the last time you were connected to the internet.”
- “No connection drop problems. You are checking your news feed and the connection suddenly drops: you will be able to continue to read and interact with your news feed. You won’t even notice connection problems.”
- “Forget about data errors You are uploading a photo and your internet connection drops: oStream will simply detect the error and re-upload the photo for you as soon as you’re back online.”
I just installed the app on my phone, and I can testify to the fact that it is much quicker than Facebook’s standard app. Partly, that’s because this app is not trying to do as much as the original Facebook app, but for most users that’s a welcome change.
The one thing I noticed from just a quick run-through is that you can’t post to your own Facebook pages if you want (say, if you have access as an admin or editor of a brand page), but Facebook’s support for this feature has always been a bit sketchy anyway.
If you want to use Facebook in a more standard way, then you have everything you need. You can get to groups, and you can post comments and photos.
I think one of my favorite aspects of the app is that it doesn’t group all of the posts in my news stream by Facebook’s mysterious EdgeRank system. It simply shows me what my friends are saying in real-time. (Imagine that!)
oStream is still in beta mode, so more changes should be expected. So far, this app looks great, and oStream is an improvement on the user experience of the standard Facebook app. Maybe Zuckerberg and his crew should be paying attention.
Source: XDA Developers