Yesterday was the finally release of the new Facebook App for the iPhone from Apple. According to the official message from Facebook, there are a lot of new features. Painfully, we miss the opportunity to write own Twitter postings from the app directly.

As the Twitter feature on facebook.com was released only a few days ago, tweeting will be probably possible in the next iPhone version.
Otherwise, however, a lot of painfully missing features in the previous version are now available on the iPhone. Certainly this version of Facebook will soon be found in the first places of the ranking list at the Appstore.

Here is the list of new features available for the iPhone App:

• Display of future events and RSVP
• Birthdays of your friends
• Show the self-managed sites, posting updates and photos
• Write notes and show the comments from friends
• Uploads of videos (iPhone 3GS)
• Uploads photos to an album
• Numerous photo and album management tools
• Change of profile photos
• Zooming Photos
• Select the News Feed
• Built-in Web browser for viewing Web pages linked
• Select all sites of friends and their friends
• Ad mutual friends
• Simple search for people and pages
• Friend Requests
• Becoming fan of pages
• Simple phone call and SMS to your friends
• Creating shortcuts for friends and sites
• Setting the sort order (the names of friends in the chat)

To type in a phone number requires full concentration on the screen. Gone are the days when you wrote a complete SMS with the mobile phone in your pocket. Is this a step back in development?

Years ago the problem has been solved perfectly with Windows Mobile: Thanks to the extra-fee “Voice Command” add-on, speech was converted to the wanted dial-ups without necessary training even at normal environmental sounds. This feature is also included in the software “BlueMe” in cars from Fiat and Alfa Romeo. There it can be activated with a switch on the steering wheel.

Both iPhone and G1 only come out with some announcements of these opportunities, but they are not implemented so far. So you still need the targeted pressure on the touchscreen surface for dialing.

Contact lists are no big help with these phones. For comfortable scrolling and searching through the name list, both hands are required, especially if you have short thumbs.

No less difficult is the search for a stored contact. On G1 the search is hidden behind the menu button. With the iPhone you have to close the application “Phone” (green phone icon) and to open the “Contacts”. There a finger-tap into the search box opens the letter makes to enter the search. At least the small keyboard surface in vertical mode forces you to stop walking for finding the searched contact number.