Hands On with Facebook for the BlackBerry PlayBook

ORLANDO—The first tablet app for Facebook looks a lot like ... a phone app for Facebook.

Like the various Facebook phone apps, Facebook for the BlackBerry PlayBook is a smoother way to grab your news feeds and comment on photos than hitting Facebook's mobile site in your Web browser is. It supports Facebook chat, and it has a great-looking friend list. But it doesn't yet work in portrait mode, and the landscape-mode UI has a lot more white space than I'd like.

Launch the app and you immediately see your news feed, with all the right elements: images for your friends, the updates, as well as the ability to like, comment, expand threads and jump to links. The layout, in landscape mode, lets you see three or four updates at a time, and scrolling is quick and smooth. If you click on a link, it opens, and thanks to the PlayBook's multitasking OS, it's easy to swipe back to the Facebook app.

You can enter a new status message by tying in a field at the top of the screen; you can also insert images from your camera or photo library, or paste a URL you copied over from the browser.

Click on an icon at the upper left to get six options: News Feed, Profile, Friends, Messages, Chat and Photos. They all do pretty much what you expect, except for one: if you go to your Friends list, instead of a text list of names with headshots, you see a great-looking set of pictures marching all the way across your screen with the names under them. You can also set the friends list to a vertical list with a ton of white space, but really - why?

Other icons in the top bar pop down a list of notifications, incoming chats and settings options; you can disable chat in the app, but if you want to change your Facebook account settings, it sends you to your browser.

I really like the way the app handles viewing photos. When you click on a photo, it blows up to full-screen mode; tapping on the picture throws a translucent bar across the top with like and comment options, and you can swipe to the side to step between pictures. It's a great-looking use of the PlayBook's capabilities.

The app definitely takes care of all of your basic Facebook social-networking needs. The UI tends to have a lot of white space, caused by long strings of text working their way across the landscape screen - I can't help but think it would be more convenient in portrait mode.

There's no integration of Facebook with any contacts, calendar or email, of course - the PlayBook doesn't have any of those things.

And as with all mobile Facebook apps, this one doesn't show Facebook as the platform it is. Facebook in a browser, as we know, is full of its own apps - things like Farmville and those zombie games, which are annoying, but which many people love. You're not going to get any of that in Facebook mobile apps, which is a mixed blessing depending on how much you like those plug-ins.

That all said, there's no reason not to download this app - it's free. It's definitely faster than waiting for full Web pages to load, and the interface for the friends list and photos is very handsome. All in all, a good version one. Now how about some e-mail, RIM?

PCmag

BlackBerry PlayBook to finally get video chat, Facebook app

RIM as part of its BlackBerry World intro detailed plans for two major apps to help round out the feature set for the BlackBerry PlayBook. The tablet is now finally getting an official Video Chat app that will let owners make two way calls between other PlayBook owners on Wi-Fi. Calls can handle both front and back cameras and, like FaceTime, can take incoming calls without having the app running.

The friends list here is tied to a BlackBerry ID but separate from regular BlackBerry contacts due partly to the lack of a native contacts app. Owners can still set the system to a "do not disturb" mode that will ignore calls when involved in something else.

The Facebook app provides a more optimized view of the social network that can use all of its media and live features, including photos and even 1080p video viewing. Media playback is optimized for the HDMI video out, Facebook said. Both Facebook Chat and full friend interaction should work.

Video Chat will be available on May 3, while the finished Facebook app should be available sometime later in the month.

The Video Chat component is significant for RIM, which has been criticized by many for including the dual cameras but omitting one of the more important, promised features. Apple and Google both consider video chat important on their respective tablet platforms and made sure to include it on launch. RIM is widely known to have rushed the PlayBook to stores to have a competitor to the iPad on shelves even though it lacked both video chat as well as e-mail, a calendar, and other important apps.

Electronista