On April 27, 2017, Facebook launched Messenger Lite in 132 countries. Messenger Lite is a low-bandwidth version of the original Messenger service. It is targeted to Android smartphones that have limited memory and processing power.
Facebook’s head of Messenger David Marcus announced in this post that the service aims to “make sure that everyone can have a great experience with Messenger irrespective of the age of their smartphone.”
He announced, “If you have an older phone that does not have significant memory or has limited processing power, and you want the benefit of messaging quickly with any of the 1.2 billion+ people using Messenger every month, give Lite a try!”
Initially, this service was released in only five countries – Kenya, Tunisia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela – last October. But, from April 27 onwards, Messenger Lite has been made available in 132 additional countries including Germany, Nepal, Colombia, and Japan.
Meanwhile, TechCruch pointed out, Messenger Lite is not available in Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, UK, US and a few more.
As mentioned before, the Messenger Lite app consumes considerably less memory and processing power. It was built to end the woes of users with low-end hardware devices and users having access to 2G internet network. This application comes with all the core features of Messenger like messaging, sending and receiving photos, links, and stickers. It also uses lesser data. However, it comes sans the processor-heavy features like Messenger Day, third-party apps, and photo filters.
Although Facebook has been coming after Snapchat’s users hard in recent months, Messenger Lite will compete more directly with its own WhatsApp as the messaging platform with the lowest barrier to entry.
It is only available on Android, but it works with older versions of the operation system all the way back to Android 2.3 Gingerbread. IOS and other software users need to wait for this lighter version of Facebook messenger.
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