Appletell | Apple, Mac, iPhone, iPod | News, Rumors, Reviews, How-Tos

The Facebook iPhone application has been amongst the top downloaded applications on the App Store from it’s release. Since then, it has come a long way in terms of development and what it is capable of. However, the latest point release of the application may bring some of the most exciting features to the application. The two updates listed by the developer were push notifications and contact sync, which are both very useful, in my opinion.

For one, now that the iPhone app has push notifications, I may finally turn off all the email alerts I receive on my iPhone when I get a notification on Facebook. While the notifications that get pushed to the phone aren’t near as customizable as the emails in terms of when you get one, they are enough for me. Each pushed notification contains the name of whoever performed the action as well as what it was. When you slide the unlock bar during it, you are taken to the Facebook app’s notification page. In my experience, I found that it pushes notifications for comments on stories on your wall as you would expect, but I haven’t seen anything else yet. I would imagine it may also push inbox messages. With Facebook Notifier on my desktop and this app on my iPhone, I’m pretty sure it’s now safe to say I’m fully able to feed my Facebook addiction.

The other part of the update is contacts sync. While I didn’t do it myself, it claims to add your Facebook friends to your contacts as well as alter your existing contacts to include their Facebook profile picture and link to their profile. I didn’t do this simply because I don’t want all of my Facebook friends to appear in my contacts application, as that is a lot more personal for me than my Facebook friend’s list. That said, it is a nice option to have.

Facebook users will want to launch iTunes or the App Store iPhone app and download this update as soon as possible.

Product [Facebook]