5 alternative Android clients for Facebook

The official Facebook client for smartphones and tablets slows down your performance and hogs way too many resources. Not only because of the amount of your data plan it eats through every month, but adding insult to injury,  it also completely drains your battery life.

Given that quitting social networks like Facebook is not on the order of the day, here is a list of five great alternatives to the official Facebook client, all of which will let you access your Facebook account from your smartphone or tablet without uselessly sacrificing battery life or data.

SlimSocial

First things first, here’s our favorite. While it might not have absolutely all of the functionalities of the official app, it works much faster and does more than enough. Especially if what you’re looking for is checking your timeline and keeping up to date with your contacts. Less than 700Kb, a tiny amount of data, eliminating advertising and sponsored links, little escapes SlimSocial which is why we recommend it above all else. Actually, we recently compared it with Facebook Lite, it’s main rival. Results in, at the end of the day, it really gives Facebook Lite a run for its money and in some ways actually comes out on top. [Download]

Metal For Facebook

Another ‘web wrapper’ that converts it’s browser client to an independently running app by dolling it up with Material Design and adding on interesting features like zero advertising, the possibility to get notifications (this feature is limited on other alternative clients), as well as adding on an optional bar next to the notification bar with access to frequently used actions. Not bad at all.  [Download]

Toffeed

Also based on the official web client for Facebook, Toffeed stands out from the crowd mainly because of its sophisticated level of customization. Here, you’ll have access to a floating button to publish certain things like, your status, a check-in, or any other kind of post. As far as extra features go, what really got them onto our list is the possibility to hide sponsored posts on Facebook as well as the option to decline from automatically downloading the images that appear on your timeline.  [Download]

Fast Facebook

Fast Facebook is the most customizable and fully featured unofficial Facebook client. It lets you choose a number of different cards to put on your timeline, among other things. When browsing, it places a new direct access bar in the upper corner of your screen from which you can go straight to your message inbox, timeline, or to an updated list of favorites along with tons of other features. This app’s biggest setback, though, is that it also adds an advertisement bar integrated into its free version. So, if you want to use Fast Facebook ad-free you’ll have to pay for it, unlike the others which are already free and will cost you nothing. [Download]

Facebook Lite

To wrap things up, we’ll briefly mention the official lightweight Facebook app, Facebook Lite, which was more or less cutting edge when it came out, and lighted the way for the many others to come. It’s practically the web browser version, no frills. Which might be why this app is lighter and uses fewer resources, and is definitely a viable option if you’d rather not trust third parties with your Facebook account information.  [Download]