Whilst Facebook employees are currently struggling to launch their own apps, Facebook is still able to update its own customer-facing app on the App Store. Today, it did just that.
This update brings native support for the iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR screen resolutions. Up to now, Facebook on the new screen size iPhone models would run in a compatibility mode, scaling up the 5.8-inch iPhone XS resolution onto the larger displays.
The native support means that the apps can now actually take advantage of the additional points available on the 2,688×1,242 iPhone XS Max screen and the 1,792×828 iPhone XR screen.
The XR runs at 2x Retina resolution, whereas the XS Max runs at 3x Retina. Both share the same logical canvas of 896×414 points to render on. This is higher, in both dimensions, compared to the iPhone X/XS logical resolution of 812×375.
What these numbers mean is that you can see approximately 10% more content at a time in the Facebook app than you could when the apps were running in their upscaled mode, and text will also look sharper on the screen as the pixels can lay neatly on pixel boundaries rather than being artificially stretched.
The update also removes the black bars from the sides of the new iPad Pro screen, with native full-screen support for the 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro.
The Facebook Messenger app was also updated this week with the same support for the 2018 iPhones.
