Facebook Lite Gets Released in The U.S. And Other Countries

• Facebook Lite app is now available in the US as well as a few other countries. 
• The app is much lighter and consumes less data when compared to its counterpart.
• It will only be available to Android users for now. No official statement has been made regarding its availability for iPhone and Apple devices.

The Facebook Lite app was developed by the social media giant as a pared-down version of their original application. The lite version was meant for individuals in developing countries with limited bandwidth and slower Internet connections. However, as of this Friday, the application will be made available in the US and UK, as well as in other countries such as Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, and New Zealand.

Granted people living in these developed areas rarely suffer from slow or inconsistent internet connections, but that doesn’t mean they won’t have a use for the app. Facebook Lite is significantly lighter and takes up less space on smartphones. People with older phones will find the app to be very useful. Also, less data consumption does mean saving on your data plans.

Image Courtesy of Time Magazine

The Facebook lite app was designed and developed in 2015. Back then, it was being tested in countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Suda, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, and others. As of now, it is accessible from over 100 countries and is used by over 200 million users.

The app is based on a special version of Facebook - the one that runs on feature phones. This makes the app super lightweight - around 252KB to be exact and requires very low processing power. However, unlike its feature phone counterpart, Facebook Lite comes with most of the options we expect from a smartphone app.

Here is what Facebook had to say on the matter: "To help everyone have a great Facebook experience regardless of where they connect or the bandwidth they have, in many countries we rolled out Facebook Lite as a standalone, native app with features such as News Feed, status updates, push notifications, and camera/photo integration."

As of now, only Android users living in the countries mentioned above will be able to access the Facebook Lite app from Friday. There hasn’t been any statement made by the company regarding when the app will be released for Apple devices as of now.