Facebook app for iPhone is much slower than many apps, and if you are the one who feels we need a faster app, then wait for next month to get your hands on a “blazing fast” Facebook application for iPhone according to New York Times.
Facebook is apparently building the Facebook app from ground to give boost to it’s existing application. Facebook for iPhone app is one of the most downloaded app in the Apple’s appstore, and lot of Facebook users are using mobile apps to access Facebook.
Facebook’s current app is built using HTML5, many components of the app are built using this technology and is wrapped in Objective-C shell. This gave advantage to Facebook Engineers to re use the code in other applications, but in doing so the app became slow and degrades the user experience.
The current version of the app is essentially an Objective-C shell with a Web browser inside. When it comes to speed, this is like putting the engine of a Smart Car in the body of a Ferrari.
According to Nick Bilton from NY Times, who spoke to two Facebook Engineers the new app is built using Objective-C, this is the language for building iOS applications. Apps built this way will make use of the iPhone hardware and most of the app functionality is built directly into the application. He used the application and believes that the application is “blazing fast”.
Currently the new application is being tested and is expected to launch sometime next month. The application will look the same and don’t expect any new features, as it remains the same except under the hood changes, the only difference you will notice is speed, which is a welcome change for Facebook iPhone users.
As Service2Media has pointed out
many times there’s nothing wrong with HTML5 for less critical Apps. We deliver
HTML5 wrapped in our runtimes as a Hybrid solution for multiple platforms when
that makes sense. But crucially our Hybrid Solution also offers Efficient
Runtime Logic and Native Components. So it offers a high performance engine
within our own Ferrari body, running natively on all the major OSs, not just
iOS.
Facebook have solved their speed
issue by rewriting the same App in native code using objective C. Great for iOS
but they’ll need to re-write it for Android, and Windows 8 and maintain it
separately on each platform.
So if Facebook had used our
Hybrid App Platform they would have got a fast efficient implementation running
on multiple platforms. But that’s not all, Facebook would also have Apps that
were future proofed against changes to versions of each OS and able to be
evolved over time.
See http://www.service2media.com