Facebook for Android has always struggled with performance issues and particularly laggy scrolling due to its dependence on webviews instead of native code. The company has now finally rolled out a native build of the app for Android which promises to double the performance of the application. The application is expected to be twice as fast at looking at photos and opening up the timeline.
Launch timings to have been worked at according to Phillip Fung, a Facebook engineer. The popular social network has decided to keep the interface the same while making extensive under-the-hood changes to create a solid foundation for the app moving forward. There’s much improved memory efficiency and garbage collection to ensure that the performance is right in line with the updated iOS application which shipped a few months ago. Facebook has built its own scrolling engine and is using it instead of the one built into Android. The update will go live later today on the Play Store and should show up on your devices as well.