I have been waiting for facebook widget to be launched ever since I bought my 5800 in January 2009. With n97 promotional videos doing rounds, sporting the facebook widget on the home screen, the wait was rather long and a frustrating one. Now that its launched in the ovi store, I straight away downloaded the widget and lets see how it performs on our 5800s.

Installation

Facebook widget is of-course a free widget which you can find in the recommended section of ovi store on the client or just follow this link. Its a 1054 kb setup file (that's rather a huge package for a widget), so please do consider the data costs before downloading this widget. Installation is pretty straight forward and there are no initial settings to be bothered about. You can straight away start "facebooking" from your 5800s!

Features

The welcome screen is the very familiar login screen. Please note that once you have successfully logged-in to facebook from the widget, you wont have to bother re-logging in subsequently. As can be seen from the screenshot to the right, home screen gives you access to most of the facebook features like news feed from your friends, events (you can accept/deny events), messages, notifications, pokes etc. At the bottom of the screenshot, you can see links to navigate around facebook (Home, your profile, friends, photos and inbox). You can set your status by navigating to your profile but unfortunately the widget hanged twice when I attempted the same on my 5800.

One can see a camera icon on the top left  corner of the widget, clicking on which opens up a pop-up, giving you the option of uploading photos from your phone gallery and even capture a photo using the built-in camera. I was not able to figure out how to directly save a photo shot from built-in camera to facebook without having to go to the gallery and then uploading. I would let the readers throw some light in this direction. Navigating through photos is one of the best features of this client, letting the users browse through albums in both portrait and landscape modes.

As can be seen from these two screenshots, one can see the photos in full screen mode, by adjusting the orientation of our 5800.Clicking on the green "+" will let you leave a comment on the photo and tags on the photo can be seen by clicking on "tags" soft button on the top left as seen in these two screen shots. One can navigate back and forth by clicking on the arrows on the bottom half of the screen. The widget hanged again when I attempted to leave a comment on photos. In all, during 30 minutes of using this widget on my 5800, it handged thrice: twice when I tried to update my status and once for attempting to comment on a photo. Please leave us a comment if you are able to perform the above two tasks and if there are any other tasks that may "hang" or "freeze" the widget. Now lets discuss some pros and cons of this widget:

Pros

1. A very easy to use widget, fully optimized for finger touch browsing
2. Brings most of the facebook features on the mobile client
3. Photos can be seen in full screen, by adjusting the orientation accordingly
4. Inbox message exchanges are displayed in ichat bubble like format

Cons

1. Attempting to perform some tasks repeatedly "freezed" the widget
2. The widget performance was a bit slow compared to performing similar tasks in the symbian browser

Verdict

A dedicated facebook client for s60 5th edition phones is bound to generate a lot of interest. The widget in general has more pluses going for it than the negatives but it does need some tweaking. Updating a status is something I would like to do often on my facebook profile and was disappointed when the widget freezed twice when I attempted to do the same. I was very much impressed by photo navigation though. If the developers can sort out a few issues highlighted here, this widget will be a definite hit with the masses. As of now, owing to the huge popularity of facebook am sure most of the users will download this widget and may be a tad disappointed with some bugs and laggy browsing speed. Still, its one of the better designed widgets available on 5800 today.

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