Facebook launching rebuilt, speedier iPhone app in July

It’ll look exactly the same, but Facebook is expected to launch a rebuilt version of its iPhone app that will work much faster than its current one, according to a report.

The rebuilt Facebook app is expected to show up as an update in iOS next month with the primary purpose of fixing its slowness and its crashes.

To fix the issues, Facebook has revisited its iPhone app and recoded it entirely, for the most part using the standard Objective-C coding language to build the whole thing. Currently, the app only uses Objective-C for its shell and relies on HTML5 for the bulk of the app’s features.

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Using HTML5, Facebook was able to develop multiple versions of the app for the many different smartphones on the market while saving time and keeping a uniform look. But opting not to use Objective-C until now has given the app a speed disadvantage simply because Facebook had chosen not to use every tool at its disposal.

The app, which was reported by the New York Times, looks the same but works much faster, with the reporter saying it’s “blazing fast.”

Facebook did not confirm the app or talk about it, but two of its engineers working on it spoke with the New York Times.

If Facebook does improve its app next month, that would add to a series of moves the company has taken this summer and the last few months to improve its presence in mobile.

In April the company purchased Instagram, an iOS hit, and last month, the company released two new mobile apps, Facebook Camera and Facebook Pages Manager.

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