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image © Bryan Stratton

Now that I’ve had a few days to play with version 3.0 of the Facebook iPhone app (which was recently upgraded to 3.01), I can say with confidence that it’s the update I’ve been hoping to see for a long time. In fact, my only criticism is that we didn’t get it months ago, when Facebook went through its last major redesign.

The addition of the menu screen is probably the biggest and best improvement to the app. Navigating the app with nine, Home Screen-like buttons drastically simplifies what was a needlessly overcomplicated UI in the previous version. And being able to add quick links to frequently visited friends’ pages streamlines the browsing experience even more. (In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing something like this on the actual site, especially if it was implemented discreetly, to avoid the MySpace “who’s in my top eight?” drama.) I also like that there’s a Notifications tab at the bottom of the menu screen, and that the number of unread notifications (not just unread emails) appears on the Facebook icon in the Home Screen.

image © Bryan Stratton

Other things I’m digging on include the ability to finally view and create Notes, see all of your upcoming Events (including friends’ birthdays) and enjoy the full filtered or unfiltered News Feed. The redesigned Chat interface is also quite slick and functional, and I’m glad they didn’t muck up the most useful feature in the original app, which was the ability to use your Friends list as a second Contacts list and call them without leaving the app.

Overall, I think that the app presents a very clean and efficient version of Facebook‘s core features, one that is almost preferable to the main site, especially  if you’re the sort of person who can’t stand seeing a feed that’s choked with quizzes and app postings. I’ll be interested to see how long it takes Facebook app designers to start taking advantage of the iPhone app’s potential and whether or not it’s possible to do so without sacrificing the iPhone app’s streamlined design.