iPhone vs. Android: A Facebook perspective
Last night, one of my friends, who posted a craigslist ad and wanted me to look at it to tell her if it sounded okay, ended up sending me a link to it in a Facebook message, as Facebook is her only form of communication with me as of right now. Let’s look at how I would have had to view this URL on an iOS device, and my own Android device (An HTC Evo Shift)
iPhone: Open facebook from the homescreen. Tap Messages, tap the message that you need to view, then tap the URL to open it in Safari. Failing that, hold down on the URL, select the text, select copy, paste into the URL bar in Safari.
Android 2.3: Open Facebook, hit the back button as it defaults to notifications. Hit messages, get a Force Close because the latest Facebook update is broken and will crash if you try to do something other than a status update.
Fire up Browser, go to facebook in the browser, then load up messages via mobile facebook. Unfortunately, mobile facebook doesn’t make URL’s into links, so you try to copy and paste.
Hold down, try to select the URL for copying, and it keeps trying to copy the numeric number embedded in the URL as a phone number, ignoring the rest of the URL. Hit menu, then select the “select text” option. You get a cryptic mouse pointer. I try to select the text, and it says “text copied to clipboard”. Attempt to paste into browser, there’s no text on the clipboard. Give up and go to computer.
