14 DAY TRIAL // Over the past weeks, Facebook Home has come under fire because of the various ways it affected Android users and the company’s employees seem to be the ones to blame.
And that’s not because they did anything wrong, it’s just that their affinity to iPhones prevented those that tested the app to notice everything that’s been bugging Android users about the Facebook Home, Tech Crunch notes.
Facebook employees reportedly admitted that many of the testers for Home were normally iPhone users and were unable to detect anything wrong with the changes Home made to the handset, including doing away with widgets, removing the dock for often-used apps and keeping users from creating app folders.
This is also the reason why the iOS Facebook app is more polished than the one on Android.
Facebook, however, is trying to fix the mistakes it made when it created Home and the company is now preparing a new version of the Android skin that will modify most of the things users complained about.
According to the company, users like Cover Feed and Chat Heads. The app apparently makes users spend 25% more time on the social network.
The new version, however, will bring back the dock for the most used apps and will also present users with a walkthrough when they first start up the app.
Facebook Home was released with much noise and it managed to attract over a million downloads in the first month. However, the Facebook Android skin wasn’t such a big hit among U.S. Android users.
The fact that the app is limited to six Android handsets could also be one of the reasons why it has such limited spread through those who use this type of devices.
As for iOS, Facebook would like to bring Home to these devices as well, but Apple has a tight-leash on how much you can modify its platform. They said, however, that they’ll be tweaking the basic Facebook iOS app in order to bring Home-like features to the devices.