Bloo – The Facebook Android app that you have been waiting for is here. No, Facebook and Android haven’t played nice since the T-Mobile G1 debuted last October, but the premier social networking website finally has a decent app in Bloo.
Androinica first reported on Bloo last month and said we thought it might be the first Facebook Android app to get things right. The verdict: you better believe it does. Bloo is a fully-featured Facebook client that makes it easy to read and comment on statuses, check friend feeds, read or write on walls, send messages, get notifications and perform many of the other tasks that make Facebook one of the most popular websites on the Internet.
Bloo, which costs $1.49 in the Android Market, is what Facebook on Android should have been from the beginning. Using “The Feed” gathers all of the status updates, links, photos, and comments that appear in your friend’s list. Tapping once on feed content allows users to comment, and long pressing can “like” that content or visit a friend’s profile.
PROFILES & PHOTOS
Facebook profiles are handled fairly well in portrait view; landscape has a few formatting issues that cause content not to display correctly. However, Bloo quickly loads a user’s wall posts and their basic information. It would be nice to have the option of displaying full profile info – including hobbies, favorite movies, etc. – but that is not crucial to the Facebook on the go experience. Besides, doing so might affect the speed of Bloo. Oh, wait, did I not mention that Bloo is fast? I have used it on Wi-Fi and 3G, and the app loads content quickly on each connection type. The speed and refresh rate are much better than what I have previously experienced in other apps.
Photos and Facebook go hand-in-hand, so you’ll be happy to know that Bloo is exceptional at loading images. The “Photos” section allows users to browse through their uploaded Facebook galleries, so you can always have those questionable party photos on-hand. Why you would want to I’ll never know, but people like options. Looking at a friend’s recently-uploaded photos is also strong as Bloo quickly loads images, shows captions, displays or adds tags, zooms on double-taps, and can save images. The only things missing are easy-to-navigate buttons to move from one photo to the next.
Bloo is a legit Facebook application. It has a few small issues to address, but also has a committed developer ready to improve it. This app directly addresses many of the criticisms leveled against Facebook Mobile’s limited website and the underwhelming Android apps that predate it. Simply put: Bloo is the Facebook Android app that you’ve always wanted.
App: Bloo (version 1.0)
Price: $1.49
Website: http://fbandroid.wordpress.com
UPDATED:This review originally stated that there were force close errors when posting to someone’s wall. The problem has been addressed, so the critical statements were removed.
July 3rd, 2009 at 8:01 pm
This is great! I will gladly pay money to check this out and (hopefully) keep it)
July 6th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
You forgot to mention that the dev's support is amazing so far–multiple updates over a holiday weekend? Yes, please!
July 6th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
It's true, the app is amazing. However it seems to be missing some basic functionality. Where's my inbox? Where is the rest of the info from user profiles? "The Feed" only shows a limited number of items, almost pointless. Although I must say that the dev is brilliant and I'm sure these will be added/fixed in future updates. I've already bought it and am using it everyday. There are only a few decent quality apps on the Android market and this is one of them.
July 6th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
The dev has already said he is going to add those features shortly so I didn't harp on it too much. He's moving at a fairly quick pace to add messaging and increase the feed size, so I'm sure we'll see more come fairly quickly. You can join the Bloo Facebook group to be notified when these updates are available.
July 8th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
Babbler is the superior android facebook app.
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:10 am
Munted: The inbox is not available in the Facebook API, so you can't really blame Bloo for lacking this feature, this is Facebook's fault. Babbler provides a link to the mobile web for the inbox, that's a possibility to do for Bloo too I guess, but I'm not sure I would like that. Bloo has such a nice, streamlined user interface and is truly native, adding features from the mobile web would break that. Babblers interface is already broken and full of crap, so in that app it doesn't make much difference..
To me, Bloo has all the features I need and it presents them in a very nice way, as opposed to Babbler. Therefore, I think Bloo already is much better than Babbler, even though I think Bloo will be even better with the release of Bloo 1.3.