14 DAY TRIAL // With everyone talking about smartphones and mobile computing these days, it's easy to forget that most of the world still uses non-smart 'feature' phones. Most of the world also uses Facebook, which is why the new Facebook app for feature phones comes in very handy for a lot of people.
"We're launching the new Facebook for Every Phone app, which offers a fast and comprehensive Facebook experience on over 2,500 different phones," Facebook announced.
"This app not only includes Facebook’s most popular features, such as News Feed, Inbox, and Photos, but also enables you to upload photos and find friends from your phone’s contacts," it added.
The app is now available directly from Facebook or from various app stores serving feature phones.
The aim is to make the Facebook experience much more compelling even on these limited devices. The app looks and feels like the Facebook smartphone app, though the navigation is less intuitive and more restrictive.
Still, with the app, you can do pretty much everything you can on the main site. The big new feature for users with this type of phone is the ability to upload photos.
The new app is based on an app created by Snaptu, a company acquired by Facebook earlier this year. The revamped version is more feature rich and is also designed to keep data usage to a minimum.
Even so, this issue is probably the thing limiting most people from checking into Facebook on their phones, which is why Facebook is partnering with several carriers to offer 90 days of free data usage for the app.
Facebook has several efforts aimed at this type of devices. Apart from the regular, but rather lacking, mobile site, there is also Facebook Zero, a stripped-down, text-only version of the site that mobile users can access for free, again thanks to partnerships with carriers.