Facebook recently launched their long-awaited 3.1 update for the Apple iPhone 3.0 OS, which finally includes Push Notifications and a new Contact Syncing function that syncs your iPhone’s address book with your facebook contact data.

Push Notifications

Push Notifications via your iPhone will finally allow Facebook to send you those nifty little SMS-like messages to notify you on such things as new messages, wall posts, friend requests, friend confirmations, photo tags, events, and comments.

It may be worth taking some time to customize your notification settings as to avoid being spammed too heavily by Facebook though.

Contact/Address Book Syncing

While this is a welcome and much needed utility for those of us that use Facebook to maintain personal connections over vast distances, the native Facebook Address Book Sync seems rather elementary compared to a third-party application that I use called SmartSync.

Native Facebook Sync Settings

SmartSync Sync Settings

Native Facebook iPhone Application

Settings only allow you to specify whether or not you’d like the app to overwrite the existing contact photos for any contacts that Facebook syncs with your iPhone’s address book.

SmartSync iPhone Application

Allows you to specify a far greater selection of options to customize the way Facebook contact data is synced with your iPhone Address Book.

Photo Syncing settings allow you to not only specify whether or not to replace existing photos in your address book, but also specify the size and image quality of the contact photos.

SmartSync also allows you to customize the data which is syncing between Facebook and your iPhone Address Book, whereas the native Facebook Application automatically syncs all data without user customizable options.

SmartSync iPhone Application

SmartSync Unmatched Contact Options

Facebook Sync - FB Homepage Syncing

SmartSync Upcoming Birthdays