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Okay...so am I the only "techie" rocking FB Home on the GNex?

UBRocked

UBRocked

VZW Nexus Please!!!
Hi to all! :D

So like many of you I'm sure...I wanted to play around with Facebook Home when it was released. Found the apk files here and started using it.

I'm not very much into FB...I don't read many of the post from my friends, I don't post much myself and I rarely "like" anything I do read.

I'm one of those people that turn my phone on every few minutes just to check the time and check for notifications even though I really don't have a need to. I found myself actually swiping through the pictures and status updates, liking things along the way, and even added a few comments. I started doing this every time I picked up my phone. Playing right into Facebook's hands LOL!

But my performance was pretty laggy on the GNex when I started with FB Home. So I even went as far to wipe my device, remove the JB Sourcery ROM I was using, and put a rather vanilla build of CM 10.1 on my phone. I did not restore many of the apps I had on my phone that I only use on occasion. I loaded FB Home and am now sporting a more minimal look and feel. Performance is now very fluid, and maybe it is just the change of pace...but I'm not missing my plethora of app shortcuts and widgets that I normally used. Then I realized that I was not really using most of the widgets that I normally had on my homescreen. Seriously...I have always had a Pandora widget on my homescreen but just always jumped back into the app when I need to change tracks.

I think something like SO.HO launcher with the new FB Messenger app featuring the very cool, yet poorly named, "chat heads" probably makes more sense for me if I wanted to have FB more "in my face" but FB Home is just working for me...for now.

I'm kind of surprised that I'm liking it so just wondering if there is anyone else (rooted or not) in this boat? Just curious :p
 
After taking the time to customize my home screens with my folders and widgets and get all my Nova Launcher gestures set up, I'm just not interested in replacing it with another launcher, not just Facebook Home specifically.

My other reason for not trying Facebook home is that it requires installing the Facebook app, which I gave up on after giving it many chances. It will stay uninstalled and I'll continue using the mobile website, which I check a few times throughout the day. But glad you're enjoying it.
 
The chat heads are a part of the new FB messenger app. They can be used with any launcher and can be used as your default app for SMS (FB Home and the FB app are not needed). Anyone give that a shot?
 
UBRocked said:
The chat heads are a part of the new FB messenger app. They can be used with any launcher and can be used as your default app for SMS (FB Home and the FB app are not needed). Anyone give that a shot?
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I noticed this the other day when I upped to JBS 5.1.9.2 and reloaded my apps. Interesting, sure, but I turned it back off and went to standard notifications. Was fun for about the first three minutes. Not that I have many people to msg back and forth anyway.

As for FB Home, no way. I am not a big FB user by any means, have very few friends on it, and could care less to involve more of what minimal usage I have, in a day to day basis. How is it in the real world though? One review I was reading said that the FB Home setup really pushes everything else to the background, making getting to apps and things a lot more annoying than it should be, and things of that nature. So I thought I'd ask, if you've noticed it getting in the way of anything else you do, or would've done in the past.
 
CharlzO said:
I noticed this the other day when I upped to JBS 5.1.9.2 and reloaded my apps. Interesting, sure, but I turned it back off and went to standard notifications. Was fun for about the first three minutes. Not that I have many people to msg back and forth anyway.

As for FB Home, no way. I am not a big FB user by any means, have very few friends on it, and could care less to involve more of what minimal usage I have, in a day to day basis. How is it in the real world though? One review I was reading said that the FB Home setup really pushes everything else to the background, making getting to apps and things a lot more annoying than it should be, and things of that nature. So I thought I'd ask, if you've noticed it getting in the way of anything else you do, or would've done in the past.
Click to expand...


I'm a big folder user. I love organizing my apps into categories and have always had a different theme for each of the 7 screens that I normally run. So not having a music page...or video page kind of sucks. But I rarely use the widgets that I had so its all about quickly finding the apps I use most frequently. The FB home launcher offers a full app drawer as well as custom pages for shortcuts. So I use two shortcut pages that are organized in such a way that it makes sense for me...it's not a great solution but it works relatively well. When you consider the swipes and taps needed to move to the correct page, then open a folder, then click on the app...there isn't any difference in the time it takes to launch an app.

UNLESS you are looking for an app that is typically in your dock. I miss having a dock and Facebook should have had a better method of providing custom shortcuts on the home screen itself. Maybe not a dock...but configurable shortcuts from your profile picture would have been nice. I guarantee this will be on a future update because it was a huge oversight and would be really easy to implement without changing the look and feel. And we don't need a shortcut to recently used apps...we have Android morons LOL. Recently used apps list is already baked in :)
 
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