Official Android Facebook App Coming As Soon As This Week

Some solid unofficial Facebook apps have cropped up for Android lately, but it looks like they’re going to be displaced by an official app as soon as this week. It’s going to be different than the iPhone one.

It’s going to be more limited, for one, according to TechCrunch’s source. But it’s apparently going to revolve more tightly around the stream and status updates, using Facebook’s newest Stream API that shows you how many new stream updates are waiting for you. Better Stream integration doesn’t really make up for not having an inbox though, personally. And all the crazy stuff the next iPhone app will have makes it look even more sadly barebones. But hey, it’s happening at least, right??

Facebook apparently reversed course for the same reason Pandora did after calling it saying it “doesn’t matter” last October: Android’s just about ready for primetime. (Though it helped Google deemed the project important enough to let Facebook borrow an Android engineer.) It also adds credence to the idea we’re in a third wave of Android apps—past the initial run, and the arrival of quality apps that really fit the OS—the big name apps.

[TechCrunch]