
Facebook Home suffering from poor Google Play reviews: 48% of users award 1 star - scholia
http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2013/04/12/facebook-home-suffers-from-poor-early-reviews-as-46-give-it-a-1-star-rating-on-google-play/
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gkoberger
Common complaints (after looking through a few pages):

* Only useful if you live and breath Facebook; it makes email and texts and phone calls second class citizens

* Removes all your widgets

* Would be better as a lock screen than a launcher

* Hides notification bar

* Quick Select only shows Facebook apps (and the most recent app)

It seems like a lot of complaints are from people who didn't really understand
what they were installing ("Hey, I like Facebook! Let's try it!"), and were
surprised when it turned their phone into a Facebook phone.

A lot of people seem to really like it, too, though.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
>Hides notification bar

WHAT?! Why on earth would they do that? Knowing my battery and cell tower
status is important!

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fudged71
They did that so that it's a fullscreen experience.

But I think this is also the reason that they chose to start with the Samsung
platform, because they (my NoteII at least) allow you to swipe from the top
edge to display the notification bar (yes, even with Home).

~~~
clauretano
The "facebook phone" is an HTC.

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fudged71
That's true, and I don't know what they are doing to keep app notifications,
time, and device status on the HTC phone if it remains fullscreen. I think
we're all mainly talking about the feedback which the app is getting for
people who have installed it on other devices which had their own launchers
before installing.

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druiid
I installed it just to see what it was 'all about'. I pretty much agree so far
with the 1-star reviews. It really would be something better left as a lock-
screen. The application list is pretty terrible as well (and honestly other
than access to the Facebook app, that seems to be all the 'Home' program is
really giving you the ability to see).

Also, honestly, do people want to see their 'friends' all that much as the
background to their phone navigation experience?

P.S: I ended up disabling it. I wanted to play with it for a day just to be
able to say that I gave it a fair shot, but it changes the dynamic so far in
favor to Facebook that it makes even dialing a phone contact problematic.
Sorry Facebook, Messenger is NOT a replacement for my contact list.

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Zikes
The Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps just updated with new permissions:

Other application UI

* Draw over other apps

System tools

* Read battery statistics

* Read Home settings and shortcuts

Your applications information

* Retrieve running apps

* Reorder running apps, run at startup

Phone calls

* Directly call phone numbers

The ability to arbitrarily run at startup, read what apps I'm currently
running, and draw on top of them all concern me, and I've chosen not to accept
the update at this time as a result.

~~~
smith7018
Really? I would hope the users at HN would be more inclined to understand the
needs of those permissions rather than fear mongering. You know the features
of Home and you should know that to accomplish those features, it needs those
permissions. Remember that Home is more of a shell app and the majority of its
abilities come from the Facebook app. The app shouldn't really be accessing
that information if Home isn't installed, but they are necessary for Home to
run.

~~~
tsycho
But isn't that an "interesting" choice? They could have just kept the extra
permissions tied to the Home app.

The current way, even non-Home users are giving a lot more unnecessary
permissions to the FB app. And FB isn't the most trustworthy company to give
unnecessary extra permissions.

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aeontech
When I first read about it, I thought it sounded like something designed and
dreamed up by marketing team with little regard as to whether it would be
useful in practice.

~~~
TheCapn
That's exactly how it comes across.

For people who live Facebook as if its the sole purpose of the internet this
app seams fantastic. Until they realize that the issues they've always rallied
against on the website (typically UI stuff) will now be part of their device.
Facebook is driven by ads and the research into fitting as many ads into a
space as users will accept; how was a mobile app expected to be any different?

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kevingadd
Can't even try the app out. Who releases a big application that doesn't run on
flagship Google devices like the Nexus 4 [1]? It's absurd.

[1] Google Play insists the app is not compatible with my Nexus 4 phone, so I
can't even try to install it.

~~~
slg
Someone who isn't targeting people who own a flagship Google device. There is
probably very little overlap in the Venn diagram of people who go out of their
way to get the pure Google experience and those who will truly enjoy and use
Facebook Home.

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hkmurakami
Do poor ratings even matter for a super-brand-name application like this? I
feel that if I want something like, say, Facebook messenger, I'm going to
install it regardless of what its rating is on the app store.

(though I guess with something as "strange/new" as Facebook Home, ratings
might matter in giving "on the fence" people enough confidence to try it out)

~~~
danielrhodes
Sure. Facebook Poke did not receive a lot of positive reviews and has faded
into obscurity. Likewise when Facebook was mostly an HTLM5 app and performed
poorly, there were tons of negative reviews which prompted Facebook to
refactor the app.

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gm
This is a rehash of the aftermath of pretty much any new UI design. People
dislike change itself far more than they dislike the actual change.

~~~
druiid
This is pretty separate from a UI redesign. This is a new application and then
an integration with the existing Facebook app. I'd say there isn't grouching
about the 'redesign' so much as 'Where the eff is my Android?'. I think
perhaps there has to be a barrier of some sort between the phone and the user
for a Facebook 'phone/home' to really work, but there is so much of a barrier
that there is literally no dialer immediately available to you. There IS
however direct integration with the Facebook Messenger, which I think is how
they want you to interact with contacts... sooo... yeah. I don't think the
grouching is similar to when the timeline stuff happened, etc.

~~~
smith7018
"I'd say there isn't grouching about the 'redesign' so much as 'Where the eff
is my Android?'."

People shouldn't be asking that; they're installing a launcher. Do people ask
that when they install LauncherPro? I thought people generally understood that
Facebook Home adds new Android-level UI features rather than just being a
normal app that is launched from the app drawer?

~~~
druiid
How about this... try installing it and then come back and we'll have a
discussion about it. I'm a 'power user' by far, far far, but I am pretty good
about picking up on barriers to even normal users. They went too far with
their 'integration'. This isn't a launcher so much as Facebook deeming to
allow you to access your phone applications.

~~~
smith7018
I've installed both the pre-release leak and the one released today on my
Nexus 7. Try being less of a condescending "power user" and then we could have
a discussion.

~~~
druiid
Wasn't pushing the power user part to say 'Oh ho ho, I'm qualified to talk
here'. I was simply adding it as a caveat that I'm not a 'normal' consumer of
these kinds of things.

Given that you have installed it you then saw how much it differs from the
traditional android idea of a 'launcher'. It genuinely is hiding it all away.
You can see the pathway that Facebook wants to push the users, essentially
fully hiding the idea of having on phone contacts and messaging. That's why
it's not really a launcher so much as Facebook allowing you access to your
phone (IMHO).

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thezilch
Oh well, they thought they could simply "take over" the entire, front-facing
experience of the phone. They probably would have had better success trying
their hand at releasing a better widget, surfacing the same experience without
removing the notifications bar, apps tray, etc, while being resizable and able
to coexist with other widgets (eg. 1x4 Search, 4x4 FB, 1x4 App tray).

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samstave
So, I don't yet have a Home Phone, however, I'd just liketo point out: when
the iPhone debuted - it didnt even have copy paste, video, and many many other
features that most other phones had at the time.

I love how every product launch of every 1.0 is always "GAH! Why doesn't this
debut item have all features that my 10th generation other thing has!!!"

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Skibb
This is completely overshadowing the fact that Facebook, in its befuddled
attempt to spark monetization, started charging for messages to people you're
not a friend with (unless you don't want it to end up in the Other inbox, most
users are not even aware of).

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myko
The launcher itself is beautiful, but it is extremely jarring when a function
within the launcher opens the actual Facebook app which is a really poorly
done app, especially when compared to Facebook Home which is actually rather
nice.

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underworld11
Unlikely that it will help facebook's monetization problem
[http://truvoipbuzz.com/2013/04/facebook-home-mobile-
monetiza...](http://truvoipbuzz.com/2013/04/facebook-home-mobile-monetization-
problem/)

~~~
Skibb
Indeed.

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turshija
This item cannot be installed on your device's country.

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mongol
Can someone recommend a similar app that shows nice pictures on lock screens
and backgrounds, but fetches them from sources such as Flickr?

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eranation
Sounds like a "new cola" case... Facebook might be "mobile first" but mobile
users are not always "Facebook first"

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film42
So is anyone actually gonna by the phone now?

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OGinparadise
_the application had received 398 one-star reviews out of 834, or 47.7%, on
Google Play, giving it an average rating of 2.3 stars._

1 Billion total users and less than 1000 reviews, of which 400 are really bad
ones. But those reviews might set the trend

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RossM
I appreciate that scaling at Facebook must be another world to most developers
but do they really have to start with such a small userbase each time? I knew
the app was restricted to a few devices, but didn't realise it was US-only as
well.

With the amount of scaling experience they have by now I'd have thought they
had the resources to launch a little bigger.

