Finally, Research In Motion (RIM) has released a new version of Facebook for BlackBerry v1.9. Even though it is still a beta version it is stable enough. The new version includes new features and fixes from v1.8. One of them is the Facebook messaging feature. The new Facebook for BlackBerry now has a dedicated inbox to read your Facebook messages, which was not available in v1.8.
Facebook version 1.9 was just released to BlackBerry Beta Zone members and brings with it a lot of new changes and features:
- Dedicated Inbox — View your Facebook messages in one separate inbox or within your BlackBerry messages inbox. The app pre-fetches 30 of your existing messages, and will then continue to sync messages on your BlackBerry smartphone with your Facebook inbox.
- Facebook Search — Search for individuals and pages, making it easy to find mutual friends, add friends and “like” pages. For BlackBerry 6 users, Universal Search will pull Facebook results too!
- Enhanced Friends List and Page List — View friends’ profile photos and pages in list form.
- Redesigned Navigation Bar — View your own profile and click on the Search and Message icons with the new navigation bar.
You can download Facebook for BlackBerry v1.9 officially from BlackBerry Beta Zone, which requires registration to access. You can register for free and download it from there. This new version comes with much better features, but it still doesn’t support Facebook chat. For that I have to use another third-party application to chat with my Facebook friends. One of the good ones is SocialScope.