If you're an Android user, I'm pretty sure you've tried to use the official Facebook app. And then given up.

The functionality is lame, the notifications don't work, and — most annoying of all — most of the actions within the app require being bumped out onto the mobile site anyway. In short: it stinks.

But today, all that changes. Today sees version 1.3 hit the Android Market, and with it comes a butt-load of improvements. So many, in fact, that I may start using the app regularly. And that's saying something.

So, what's changed?

First up: don't expect complete liberation from the mobile site. Clicking on a notification still bumps you out to the (touch) Facebook page. This is still a bit of a bummer (as it makes you question why you even opened the app), but most features are now in-app. For instance, messages can be read and responded to from within the app. But wait, there's more…

First and foremost is the timeline of pictures that sits down the bottom of the main screen. This shows the latest images from your News Feed. Handily, this includes the thumbnails for any links posted, so is a good place to see if any of your friends have found a new video of cats chasing laser beams.

Also, the notifications are no longer tucked away under a menu, but rather, appear as a notification “drawer” similar to Android's native notification system (only down the bottom of the screen). This is actually quite nice, as you now know how many notifications you have as soon as you open the app.

Photos are now also handled within the app, and you can comment from within the app, too.

So, to round off, this updated is a must-have for every Android user (assuming you're also a Facebook user, that is), and one that has been much-needed for a long time now. The functionality divide between the iOS Facebook app and the Android app is now finally closing. Let's just hope that Monsieur Zuckerberg's switch to Android keeps this progress rolling. Hands up who wants Facebook chat enabled?

The 3D craze continues to find its way into the cell phone market. Sharp has today announced plans to launch a smartphone that features both the 3D screen (pictured) and the3D camera the company unveiled earlier this year. While this doesn't come as much of a surprise, a Sharp representative today stressed the phone will be available by year end – globally.

Commanding a market share of about 25%, Sharp leads the cell phone industry in its home market of Japan but has been rather cautious in selling phones internationally in the past years. In the smartphone segment, the company has (even in Japan) not much to offer (provided you don’t see those Japanese “super feature phones” as smartphones).

There are no details yet regarding  pricing, specs, exact launch dates and target markets.

But to recap, the 3D parallax barrier display Sharp showed in April doesn’t require glasses to view 3D images and is actually a touchscreen (3.4 inches) made for the Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo’s next portable console.

We recently introduced you to the latest Wink touch handsets by LG. Well, it turns out the LG Wink series will actually be called Cookie in Europe. The phones will be the same however the Winks may have Wi-Fi in some regions.

Okay, so on Monday LG announced three Wink phones - affordable touch operated feature phones. Great, a successor to the Cookie series, right? Well, it turns out they will be part of the Cookie series when sold in Europe but will be marketed as Wink elsewhere.

And while the original press release makes no reference to Wi-Fi, now that we received the detailed specs sheets, it seems that the Wink Style T310 and the Wink 3G T320 phones sold outside of Europe will have two versions - with Wi-Fi and without Wi-Fi. The carriers can choose which one they want. The LG Wink T300 doesn't have the Wi-Fi option, just like its European Cookie T300 cousin.

If you're confused we don't blame you - we were confused too, while trying to spot the differences between the original press release and the new info. And the Wi-Fi thing means you'll have to be careful when buying an LG Wink - check if your carrier went with the Wi-Fi option or not. Of course, if you're buying a Cookie, that won't be of any concern as all the three new Cookie won't have even a hint of Wi-Fi connectivity.

After the jailbreak comes the unlock. And it only took a few days this time. Welcome the iPhone 4 software unlock, which will allow you to use your device with any SIM (well, microSIM, actually) card. You only have to pay Cydia a short visit and to download the tool you need, ultrasn0w 1.0-1.

It was high time some good news involving theiPhone 4 surfaced. Luckily, this time we're not going to talk about antennas, reception issues or anything like that.

The latest version of the ultrasn0w, ver. 1.0-1, manages to break the chains of not only iPhone 3G and 3GS (basebands 04.26.08, 05.11.07, 05.12.01 and 05.13.04) but also of iPhone 4 (baseband 01.59.00). Keep in mind that you have to jailbreak your phone first in order to be able to proceed to step 2, the unlock.

So, head for Cydia, type ultrasn0w (if needed, add the repo: repo666.ultrasn0w.com) and once the download is complete, start the application and let your iPhone work with any microSIM card out there.

An HTC Glacier appeared on a benchmarking site and despite its name scored some pretty sweet results. We don't know much about the Glacier though people are already spinning theories of dual-core CPUs and what not, though I don't think this is the case.

Someone over at AlienBabelTech made a lucky discovery – results for HTC Glacier, a phone that’s not on any leaked HTC roadmap. After some comparisons and calculations, they arrive at the conclusion that it’s a dual-core Snapdragon CPU running at either 1.2GHz or 1.5GHz.

But those calculations are made by using the HTC Evo 4G results as basis – 516 frames for the 1GHz Snapdragon on a WVGA resolution. The specs say that the HTC Glacier runs Android (no version) and has 480×800 pixels resolution for the screen. The Glacier scores 1432 frames (on the GLBenchmark Pro ES 1.1 CPU Skinning benchmark).

So far so good, but the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S and the Samsung M110S Galaxy S score 1413 and 1437 on that test. They are practically the same hardware so it’s a matter of accuracy. The Galaxy S run on a single core Cortex A8.

True, Snapdragon based phones (like the HTC Evo 4G and the HTC Desire) score around 500 frames. The iPhone 4 (again single core Cortex A8 based CPU at 1GHz) scores 1016 frames but has a 60% higher screen resolution.

GLBenchmark is a graphics benchmark so it’s not necessarily a very good CPU benchmark. The only conclusion we can draw from these results are that the benchmark is optimized for Cortex A8 rather than Snapdragon. Better OS support for OpenGL can easily account for the speed difference, so I’m not ready to say it’s a dual-core Snapdragon ticking inside the HTC Glacier.

The rest of the research done by AlienBabelTech seems more solid though and points to the HTC Glacier getting ready for a T-Mobile launch.