After hearing a bit about Facebook Home, I installed it to give it a whirl. I’m not a fan of replacing my launcher with Facebook Home and didn’t think I would use it full-time. After trying it out, I’m still confident in my assertion.
After the first install, it does look great. When you have a high resolution, large screen phone, and the entire screen fills with a photo; it should be attractive. I think that’s one of the reasons why Flipboard is attractive. It feels intuitive to swipe through the photos and read the status updates, although it’s a bit slow – I might do it if I have nothing to do, but not if I just want to know what’s going on.
I don’t like how they made the app launching so minimalistic. It doesn’t scale if you have a lot of apps, and you seem to lose the advantage of widgets & folders. If you don’t use a lot of stuff, that might be for you.
But I think the main reason that I wouldn’t use it on my phone is because the photos that are displayed aren’t all relevant to me, nor my personal device. I have a lot of acquaintances on Facebook, and when their picture pops up as the default photo on my phone, it’s a bit weird. I think it’ll make sense for a tablet where it can work a bit like a photo album, but the phone just doesn’t seem the right place for an app like this.
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