Android Users Love Facebook Lite for These Key Reasons

After over 10 years of existence, Facebook has announced a new rendition of its service, called Facebook Lite. The app was originally designed for those using slower tech devices in developing countries. Facebook Lite makes Facebook incredibly simplistic in order to tailor the application to low-end, budget phones with a 2G connection. You can download the app for free from the Play store.

The Benefits of Facebook Lite
Facebook Lite can also offer some benefits to people with more advanced phones. For example, the application itself is about 1 MB, and once it’s installed, it only requires 2.82 MB of storage on your device. In contrast, the standard Facebook app takes up a whopping 195 MB, which only increases as more and more data is stored on the app. If you are looking to free up your phone’s memory, you should definitely look into replacing your Facebook app with Facebook Lite.

Read More: Facebook is Testing Snapchat-Inspired Stories Feature

Facebook vs. Facebook Lite
According to reviews, the Facebook Lite layout isn’t that much different from the standard home screen — it’s just a little restructured and less visually-appealing. The icons and text are slightly larger, so lower-end phones can pick up the resolution.

There are also fewer photos on Facebook Lite compared to its standard app. For example, on your notifications tab, you only see the name of the person who notified you, as opposed to Facebook, where you see the name and profile photo of the person.

Android users are loving Facebook Lite because of its small amount of permissions. Some users complain that the standard Facebook is too invasive when it comes to permissions — it can change your background, change audio settings, expand and collapse the status bar, and mess with the sync settings. However, Facebook Lite has limited these functions.

Facebook Lite also comes with the messaging feature already installed. This contrasts with how users have to download the Messenger app in addition to the Facebook app. This makes things much more simplistic for those who use Facebook primarily for communication.

Facebook Lite certainly makes things more simple for those who are running out of room on their Android and don’t have space for both the large Facebook app and its Messenger counterpart. In sum, you should be inclined to download Facebook Lite if you are running low on space on your device, or want a very basic Facebook experience. Keep in mind the standard Facebook and Messenger apps both take up a lot of space on your device and perform many background tasks, which is likely making your device less efficient.