Review: Facebook Home

Probably the biggest buzz surrounding the launch of an app in recent memory was that of Facebook Home, but it severely disappointed.

By Adrian Collins

When Facebook Home was finally made available to international users last week, JOE's resident geeks got on the case to see what it was all about and whether or not it was worth the trouble.

Firstly, you've got to have the right hardware installed at the moment for it to work, but we imagine that's something they're working on to help make it as widely available as possible.

However, given that it's currently rated at a very generous two stars (out of five) on the Play store, that might not be too much of a problem because it has hit around 500,000 downloads in less than a week. But that was to be expected with all the media coverage and buzz surrounding it. To contextualise that, Instagram hit a million downloads in a day.

That buzz has done nothing to make this app any better, however. It's also not really an app, really it's a pseudo-operating system that runs all your other apps.

Basically, what Facebook Home does is sit in between your operating system (Android only) and all of your apps, meaning you now run your apps through Facebook. The problem here is that this obviously slows your phone down terribly, as well as putting an extra strain on your battery.

While turning the lock screen into a platform to jump onto Facebook is the end goal of this app, it isn't executed well enough to make me want to do that. It's a nice idea to have your friend's pictures on your screen, but unless your friends are professional photographers, you just end up getting grainy pictures.

Also, using anything other than Facebook became a real chore. It was extremely slow and laborious to get to the basics, like your music player, and with Facebook Messenger replacing your default messages app, you also had to go out of your way to get access to it, plus you lose all your widgets.

Essentially, this app tries to present an answer to a need that absolutely no one has, and frankly, I can't see a reason to install this on your phone unless you're constantly on the Facebook app. Even at that, this would be a slower option than just using the Facebook app, or even your browser to go the Facebook mobile site.

What they promised in the launch was an experience, and what we experienced was something unpleasant. Essentially this is a pointless app, poorly executed.

I've given it half a star only because zero is not an option.