There aren’t many social apps optimized for tablets but a few have started to appear in the Android Market. Today I want to take a look at one such app called FriendCaster for Facebook. Before we get started, let me be clear on what app is being reviewed. I will be reviewing the app that works for the phone rather than their tablet specific app called FriendCaster Tab for Facebook. The reason being that the tablet app is in beta and buggy. I found the original app to work fine with excellent tablet layout. Let’s take a look at what this app has to offer.
The FriendCaster tablet layout is clean with two columns and a vertical menu bar on the left. The top ActionBar has options for status updates with privacy setting, picture/video upload, refresh, and notifications. You also have the option of filtering news feeds by different groups, status updates, pictures, videos, etc. I found this to be a very useful feature to quickly access feeds from certain group of friends. The navigation menu is fully featured with the ability to view:
- news feeds – filtering options available
- profile
- friends – profile and wall
- photos – your album and friends album with ability to tag friends
- checkins – displays map
- messages
- groups
- events
- pages
The app allows you to access almost all of the Facebook features in a tablet friendly design which includes two sized widgets for you home screen. One missing feature is Facebook chat which must be accessed through a separate app called FriendCaster Chat. Overall the app is a vast improvement over the official Facebook app which you will ditch very quickly.
The app is free with ads or $4.99 for the ad-free pro version. You can download the free app from the Android Market or the Amazon Appstore.
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