Facebook has become an intrinsic part of many people’s lives, connecting you with friends and family in a way that never used to be possible. There are alternatives now of course, but none of them have gained much traction in comparison to the all dominating Facebook. Unfortunately BlackBerry 10 users have been a bit left out as while there is a BlackBerry 10 Facebook app it’s always been noticeably inferior to the Android and iOS versions. In fact the level of unhappiness about the Facebook app for BlackBerry 10 is so large that it’s currently standing at an average score of just two out of five on BlackBerry World.
So the news that it’s been overhauled is likely to be welcome. The update takes it to version 10 2.0 and brings both a slight change to the look of the app and a few new features. You’ll notice that it looks a bit different immediately when viewing your news feed, which has had a ‘design refresh’ to make it quicker and easier to navigate and use. It’s not a major change but it is an improvement.
The other aspects of the update are all new features and they’re all based around photos. For example you can now create new photo albums from the BlackBerry 10 app. Just head to your photos page and you should find the option there, which will make it a lot easier to manage and organize your photo collection.
You can also now upload photos to a specific album, be it one that you already had or a new one that you’ve just created on your phone.
The update makes it easier to view and find specific photos too, as you can choose to view either ‘all photos’, which will display every photo that you are tagged in, or ‘albums’ which will take you to your albums- comprised of all the photos that you yourself have uploaded (whether you’re in them or not).
Finally you’re no longer limited to tagging a photo as you upload it- you can also tag photos that are already on Facebook from the BlackBerry 10 app.
It’s a substantial update and brings the BlackBerry 10 Facebook app a little closer to the iOS and Android apps, but it still needs work. The update does a good job of bringing photos and albums up to scratch but many other things still need attention. For example it’s still not possible to create events from the BlackBerry 10 Facebook app or even to use Facebook Chat, both of which are major features which many users would surely like to see.
Still, it’s getting there slowly and with a couple more updates like this BlackBerry 10 might finally have a Facebook app to be proud of. In the meantime you might as well give this version a try. You can grab Facebook version 10 2.0 off BlackBerry World and it should be available to download now worldwide for any device that’s running BlackBerry 10 version 10.1.
