The New York Times’ Bits section writes today that according to two anonymous Facebook engineers, Facebook has rebuilt its iOS app in order to make it much, much faster. Bits notes that the current iOS app is painfully slow, with more than 21,000 customers in the App Store only giving it a one-star review; Bits even says that it is slower than most of the other apps on the App Store! The two engineers told Bits that the newly designed app has been built mainly using Objective-C, which is the programming language that normally builds iOS applications, in contrast to the present Facebook iOS app, much of which was built using HTML5. Getting even more technical, Bits explains that the current Facebook app is an Objective-C shell containing a Web browser. They equate it to putting a Smart Car engine inside a Ferrari. The Bits writer has even had a go on the new app, and confirms that it is “blazing fast.” The sources say that it is currently being tested, and will be released this summer. Don’t expect a new look though, apparently it looks exactly the same as the current version, only faster!

Source: Facebook Plans to Speed Up its iPhone App - NYTimes.com