Facebook’s iPhone App Is Finally Going to Get Faster

Facebook is giving its iPhone a much-needed speed update.

This should come as no surprise, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors during the IPO roadshow that mobile apps are the company’s first priority. This emphasis could be because Facebook earns 2.5 times as much from mobile advertisers, in addition to the rise in mobile users across the world.

Two anonymous Facebook engineers revealed plans to speed up the app to the New York Times, explaining the iOS application is undergoing a complete overhaul to be optimized for speed and will be released later in the summer.

According to the pair of engineers, the new app is being built primarily using iOS coding language Objective-C, rather than HTML5, the web-based language on which the current version is built. This means the current version of the app renders most components as web pages, whereas the new version will take advantage of the iPhone’s hardware.

Facebook had been using the HTML5-based app so that it could reuse code across different mobile platforms. While this may have made the company’s engineers’ jobs easier, it resulted in a very unpleasant user experience. The NYT points out that the vast majority of reviews for the app in the Apple App Store are extremely negative.

Don’t expect a redesign, though. The new version of the app will appear exactly the same, as the update is focused exclusively on speed.

Supposing the engineers’ report is correct, is Facebook taking the necesary steps to improve its mobile app? Let us know where you think the company should be focusing its efforts.