Announced today, Facebook for Android version 2.0 is officially out and apparently, it should blow previous versions out of the water, speedwise. According to Facebook's blog post, the app is twice as fast at displaying photos and Timeline items.
Previously, the Facebook app functioned in a sort of hybrid native/Web view, which was a major reason for its sluggish performance. With today's update, however, users will get to enjoy a completely rebuilt app, made entirely with native code. This is a big deal. The main news feed, notifications, and Timeline should feel faster, and photo loading times should be cut as well. Also, the story banner now automatically updates and pushes up new stories, no matter where you are in the news feed.
Whereas previous updates to the Facebook for Android app may have resulted in marginal speed improvements, this update should be taken as something more noteworthy. Now that the preferred (fully native) infrastructure is in place, users can only expect the app to get significantly faster and to run more smoothly from here on out. But of course, we won't know for sure until we test it.
The new Facebook for Android 2.0 is now live on Google Play.
Stay tuned for a full review.