I know it hasn’t been a full 7 days, but I can’t use this anymore, 5 will have to be enough using the new Facebook Messenger.
I can’t say I’ve been longing for an integrated messaging system on my phone, but I have thought of the benefits. There have been times where I want to send a text to a friend of mine, but I don’t have their phone number so I resort to Facebook. Let me just say, I hate the way Facebook does messaging. Trying to send a message to someone who isn’t in your “closest friends” list is a chore. Not only that, but to try to do it on your phone is even worse. Zuckerberg and team are trying to remedy this situation by making its own messaging app your default messaging app on your phone. The latest update brings the ability to port your SMS texts from your stock app to the Facebook one. Its a good idea, one that Microsoft has been doing for a while, but I think the execution is off.
First off, if I’m in the app, I get two notifications. One iOS style that overlays on top of the app, and my standard Android notification. Personally, I’d just leave the pop up notification out. The whole style of notification is disruptive and brings no functionality change that would warrant an overlay. This is one of the main reasons I have a hard time using iOS. Also dealing with notifications, they haven’t optimized for Jelly Bean. I am so accustomed to the detailed notifications that 4.1 brings that anything else is an eyesore. Also, there isn’t a number count of how many new messages I have from a specific contact. For me this happens a lot because I have twitter SMS updates from several news aggregates. My last issue with the app is the deal breaker for me. The app doesn’t merge contacts together, even when your contacts number is the same both places. If I want to text someone and I have been FB chatting for a while and with multiple people, I have to go hunting for the SMS version of his contact. Even more annoying is when both the SMS and FB conversations are next to each other.
Despite the app’s shortcomings, it is a good idea. It is really something that should be built in to every messaging app. Unfortunately, as of right now, I can’t use the app for functionality reasons, but if they push some updates to it that makes it more intuitive, I may be back.