Facebook's Android SDK Finally Catches Up with iOS Version

For developers working on Android systems who wish to integrate their apps with Facebook, life just got a little easier. Facebook just released an updated version of its Android SDK, the first update it has seen since December.

According to an article from TechCrunch, all of the “new” features in the updated SDK are not, in fact, new. They have all been available for quite some time though Facebook’s iOS SDK. The features that are now available in the Android SDK include a sleeker login UI that takes less time to load, easier integration of Open Graph objects, and the so-called “Share Dialog,” which allows users to share content to Facebook with fewer steps than before.


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By updating the Android SDK, Facebook looks to encourage developers to integrate their Android apps with Facebook if they haven’t already, and to take advantage of new features if the app has already been integrated. This will increase the amount of interaction most people have with Facebook- now when they user their favorite app, chances are they’ll have an easier time sharing updates from it with everyone on their friends list and therefore be more likely to do so.

It’s possible that this could lead to the percentage of top Android apps integrated with Facebook catching up with the percentage of top iOS apps integrated with it. While three quarters of the top 100 Android apps already integrate with Facebook, the number of iOS apps that do so is significantly higher at almost 90 percent.

Reaching more Android apps is arguably more important at this point than reaching more iOS apps, since more and more smartphone buyers have begun turning to Android. Android phones make up slightly over half of the smartphone market in the United States and over 70 percent of it in Europe, and this number is only increasing as time goes on.