Facebook has released a version of its Android app reducing the amount of data used as well as speeding up its performance on older phones, after conducting research on the app’s performance in Africa.
“A team of product managers and engineers travelled to Africa to examine mobile performance in developing countries. We purchased several different Android handsets to test the latest version of the Facebook app – and the testing process proved to be difficult,” said Alex Sourov, software engineer at Facebook.
He said intermittent data connections and lack of memory space on devices caused the application to crash.
“We even burned through our monthly data plans in 40 minutes,” he said.
However according to Sourov the Facebook engineers have incorporated numerous improvements into the new application.
The new app makes use of 50 per cent less data, has experienced 90 per cent fewer error reports, and is 65 per cent smaller than the previous version.
“We will continue to innovate to make the Facebook experience better in emerging markets, and share tools and information that can help developers build apps that work well on different handsets, network environments, and operating systems,” Sourov said.
According to the engineer, the Facebook team will also be expanding its playbook to other apps, such as Messenger and Instagram.
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