Facebook for Windows Mobile acts as a scaled-down, pocket-sized edition of the social network. Although it doesn't contain all the bells and whistles of the bloated Web-based version, you could argue that this version of Facebook is even better than the real thing.

There are some of us who find it impossible to stray away from Facebook for even a few hours for fear of missing out on all the social fun and games. For these people, this Windows Mobile app represents an indispensable companion.

You won't be able to access advanced features, run Facebook applications, or use the instant messenger, but the scaled-down interface cuts out a lot of the crap (including ads) that has come to distract from the task of checking how your friends are doing.

What you can do

The user interface houses a toolbar with five icons - Home, Profile, Friends, Messages, and Phonebook. The Home section allows you to view either the news feed (your friend's status updates, wall posts, photos, events, etc.), or just status updates.

The Profile tab gives you a clean breakdown of your latest wall posts, personal info and photos. Again, all of these can be viewed separately using the tabs at the top. Friends lets you scroll through your list of Facebook buddies or search for a name. You can open a friend's profile just by clicking on their face. The Messages tab shows you all of your sent and received mail.

Managing contacts

One of my favorite things about Facebook for Windows Mobile is the Phonebook section. Click the phone icon and it will display an A-Z list of all the Facebook contacts who have registered their phone number on the site. You can then call any of these with a simple tap. Unfortunately, there's no way of exporting these contact details to your PDA's contacts book though.

Another great thing about the app is the ease in which it lets you add photos and videos to Facebook, giving you the option to capture/record a video or photo before sending it, or grab an existing image or video from your device. I also liked the full screen photo viewer in the program, although pictures can be a little slow to load.

If you want to be connected to Facebook at all times, I can't recommend Facebook for Windows Mobile highly enough.