Since getting ahold of my iPhone, I have imposed an arbitrary rule to keep all the preinstalled apps in my "first" home screen and the third-party apps in the others. As you may or may not be aware of, the iPhone originally comes with a total of 19 preinstalled apps. Four of these (Text, Phone, Mail, iPod) have been sitting pretty on my bottom dock since Day 1, with the remaining 15 placed amid the great blackness that is my first home screen. A home screen, being a 4 x 4 icon space, can accommodate up to 16 apps, so there's room for one more on my first. That left me with a decision to make: Which third-party app to place alongside the preinstalled ones so I could access it easily from anywhere in my iPhone and so it doesn't get lost in the clutter of confusing game, entertainment and productivity apps that has come into existence in my other home screens? I say it was the easiest decision I ever made in my life. Without even thinking about it, I knew right away which third-party app I should award the distinction to. Poke! Facebook.

It goes without saying that Facebook is my favorite, most frequently used third-party app. It keeps me connected to my circle of friends, helped me make new ones, and made me believe that spending hours online is a very productive thing to do. I particularly find the app to be superbly robust, and I couldn't agree more with Dimitri who stated in his review that the app is better than the Web site itself. And now, a recent update is set to make it way better and reinforce its position in my "exclusive" home screen.

The new update promises fewer crashes, correct timestamps for all time zones, faster overall syncing and loading of messages, scrolling to the newest message in an Inbox thread, no more Friend duplicates, and page-going-blank bug fix. I installed the update, ran through it for a couple of hours, and this early I could already vouch for the effectivity of the aforementioned improvements -- except for one. The claim involving timestamps being correct doesn't seem to work entirely correctly for me yet. I am based in the Philippines and I have had problems regarding the time on my Facebook app since the beginning. Case in point: It's 12:32 PM, January 9, in Manila. I have just updated my status. Sure, my new status update says "3 seconds ago" but it is placed under the heading, "Yesterday," where only my status updates from January 8 should be. I'm guessing the server time is set at EST whereas the app follows my iPhone's time. In effect, my status update was actually posted at 11:32 PM, January 8, and since the app takes its cue from the local time and January 8 is already yesterday where I am, my new status is grouped under "Yesterday." Confusingly crazy bug. 

Be that as it may, I still think the various improvements, especially the one that gets rid of instances of the page going blank, that come with this update are absolutely terrific.

Another Facebook status update is definitely in order: Aldrin thinks Facebook for iPhone is the best. Ever.

Facebook is available HERE in the App Store.

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