Owners of iOS devices who worry they might be losing out by not being able to get Facebook’s new Chat Heads shall fear not! Facebook has brought its game-changing Chat Heads messaging feature to the iPhone and iPad via an app update.
However, unlike Chat Heats on Android devices that have Home installed where the messages can appear on the device at any time, the bubble messages with your friends’ heads on them will only appear on your iPhone or iPad screen when you are inside the Facebook app.
As well as Chat Heads, the updated Facebook app for iPhones and iPads will come with stickers (extremely fancy emoticons) and the iPad version will come with a new layout that incorporates the changes Facebook has made to the desktop version of the social network.
In recent weeks, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Home for Android and many hardened iOS users felt they might not get to savour the fruit of Facebook’s ‘mobile first’ efforts.
And while bringing Chat Heads to iOS is a step in the right direction, you can’t help but wonder if Apple’s closed rather than Android’s open dev ecosystem will always put iOS in catch-up mode in terms of new innovations in the months and years ahead.