Facebook Sync for Google Android

As a fully paid up member of the Android users’ club, I am continuing my occasional series of posts on essential Android apps – the ones that I, at least, can’t live without.

Today we are looking at a very simple application called Facebook Sync.

One of my favourite features of Android is the fact that the phone uses my Google contacts – the very same ones that I have in my Google mail. I like the fact that this acts as a built-in back up solution should I lose my phone – I don’t lose any of my contact details. They are still there waiting for me next time I log in to Google Mail (or Google Apps in my case).

Now the one thing that would surely put the cherry on the icing on the cake would be to have an image associated with my contacts so that a picture of whoever it is that is calling appears in the window. Not essential for anything, no sir, but a very nice touch none-the-less.

What Facebook Sync does is to bring images to all your contacts as long as you are friends with them on Facebook. When you open the app, there’s an check box at the bottom that asks if you want to replace non-Facebook photos that you might already have in your contacts. All that’s left to do is tap the “Start friend photo sync” and away you go. A web window opens up in which you will need to enter in your Facebook login info to allow that app to gain access to your friends list.

Once it starts the sync process, if shows you each friend picture that it is syncing to your contacts. Once Facebook Sync has finished going through all your friends and contacts, it gives you a little readout of how many contact entries were synced.

Facebook Sync can be found easily in Android Market. I highly recommend this simple but oh-so-effective app.