You may have heard that Facebook Home launched today, along with the HTC First. Facebook Home is only available for a few devices. So I quickly fired up my Galaxy S3 (running CyanogenMod 10.1) and installed Facebook Home to check it out. My initial reaction was meh. But I can see how Facebook addicts would love Facebook Home. It’s easy to set up, in fact you just login to Facebook, that’s it.
Once you’re logged in, you’re ready to use Facebook Home. It’s actually a bit odd. When you hit the home button, you are either greeted with your news feed or your apps. Which the app drawer looks like something from the Gingerbread days. If you swipe from right to left, you’ll see what should be your most commonly used apps along with a button to write a new status, upload a picture and check-in to Facebook. You’re home screen is now your news feed. Swiping across you can see all the latest news from your friends. And their cover photos or pictures are the background. It’s kinda weird, because you don’t really get to customize your home screen.
When you unlock your device, there is no slide to unlock or anything unless you have a pin or security code. Then It acts a bit weird. But as soon as you hit that power button you’re in your Facebook news feed. You can like, comment and view likes/comments at the bottom of your screen. By tapping the display, you can bring up your profile picture and sliding up brings you to all apps, sliding to the left brings you to messenger, and sliding to the right brings you to the last app opened.
In the settings of Facebook Home, you can turn off Home, choose to show the status bar, See Home when screen turns on, along with adjusting how much data Home uses. I have it set to high, and with it being on Wifi it should use more data. But it’s not using a whole lot, well at least in my opinion. It’s used about 20MB in the hour or so I’ve been using it.
Overall, I think Facebook Home is only for those that are on Facebook 24/7. Myself, I barely use Facebook nowadays so it’s not too appealing to me. But I am interested to see what Facebook does to improve Home over the next few updates. Maybe they’ll add in some new features. The Chat Heads feature is well interesting. I’m not sure that I like it or not. But it is part of the Facebook Messenger so even if you don’t have a phone that is supported by Facebook Home, you can use Chat Heads. You can also disable chat heads in the Messenger settings.
So now that Facebook Home has been out for a few hours, what are your impressions on it? Is it something you could see yourself using all the time? Let us know in the comments below. If you haven’t already, you can download Facebook Home by hitting the button down below.