Facebook Launches "Facebook For Every Phone" – Java Based Mobile App | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Launches "Facebook For Every Phone" – Java Based Mobile App

digitizor.com

21 pointsdkd90323 comments

I understand that its really "Facebook for Every (non iOS, Win7, Android, etc.) Phone" but doesn't the name sort of imply that its the same app that can be downloaded for every phone? (I know sort of a nit-picky comment)

maybe it should be "facebook for every OTHER phone"

It is a JavaME app and so any phone that implements JavaME can run it.

What phones have easily installed JavaME apps?

As far I know very few S60 users actually install apps, despite Nokia apparently having an app store.

It seems to me (perhaps due to broad generalization) that the sort of user that this would target wouldn't be able to easily load java apps on their phone (I remember having an old moto slivr that required a micro usb cable and a $20 piece of software to sync anything). Also would they even have the data plan to benefit from it (besides being billed at $0.xx a kb)?

I have to give it up to these devs, cause I don't know If I'd have the motivation to want to use a Java UI toolkit, especially trying to get it working on all kinds of older phones. Might turn in to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2754986

I'd prefer they fixed the Android app

This will probably be huge in developing countries.

This makes me want to dig out an old phone just to try. I'm not not even that into Facebook, but find this really impressive.

Why is it impressive? Java apps for mobile phones have been around for at least 10 years. They could bring out a PalmOS app as well and I'd be just as about impressed. Outside of the developing world, people with feature phones aren't likely to install the app and are even less likely to have a data plan so that it can be used. It fills a checkbox on a presentation slide, but won't make a difference.

The Java mobile apps my kids have (on their feature phones, with data their plans) and that I remember do not look this good. In my opinion it's meaningful to provide software that improves the functionality & UX for 2500 different lines of legacy mobile hardware even though that might not be "sexy."

Interesting. It seems like they are still attempting to grow in developing countries. Why are they focusing on this when their primary revenue stream is display advertising? I cannot imagine big-name advertisers are particularly interested in reaching people outside of the "Westernized" world...

They gotta pump the growth numbers somehow.

They must've soft-launched this, as I've been using it on my feature phone for at least a month.

I assumed it was just an old app that they made before smart phones dominated the market.

It's a really nice little app.

But why still no native app for the iPad :-(

Other than video/image uploads, there's not much you can't do with the Facebook website on an iPad. My wife uses it all the time without any issues.

I agree there, but the native app helps out with alerts and the whole integrated experience. The "browser" site works fine for the most part except for sometimes when you have to scroll horizontally etc.

I want to see if they will launch an app with skype/video integration ;-) that will be slick !!

Oh wait before that I think I would want to just get a native skype app for the iPad LOL.

Chat's another one IIRC.

There are third party iPad apps that'll hook into Facebook Chat for you.

I would be interested to know the architecture of the application/s to make it seamlessly work for all those phones.

Suggestions?

Most likely it's just a J2ME MIDlet, but I have no idea.

J2ME Polish (http://www.enough.de/products/j2me-polish/) was a popular cross-phone toolkit when I was spelunking in J2ME dev a long time ago ..

Its J2ME midlet, and well written I must add

Very nice effort

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