Apr 04
The HTC First is a new smartphone that’s deeply integrated with Facebook Home. The AT&T phone runs on a modified version of Jelly Bean and it’s the only phone to come pre-loaded with Facebook Home. More »
Apr 04
Facebook just announced Facebook Home, an all-new start screen/home screen of sorts for Android devices. The company took some time to demo the new software, and show us all the cool goodies, but what people really want to know is when Android users will be able to grab Facebook Home and use it for themselves.
Facebook Home will be available as a free download in the Google Play store starting on April 12, which is just next week, so it seems users won’t have to wait long to get a hold of it. Off the bat, Facebook Home will only be available for Android phones, while tablet support is in the works and will become available in the future.
Once you have Facebook Home installed, the company says that you’ll have the choice of trying it out once, or you can set it up so it’s always in use instead of the standard launcher that comes with your Android handset. Facebook says that Home will be available for tablets “in the coming months.”
As for devices that Facebook Home will work best on, Facebook as partnered with a handful of companies, both phone makers and carriers, including HTC, Samsung, EE, Qualcomm, Sony, Huawei, Alcatel One Touch, Lenovo, ZTE, AT&T, and Orange. Plus, Home will have more features and will be offered on more devices as time goes on. Facebook says it plans to release these kinds of updates once a month on average.
Facebook Home available April 12th, updates each month is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Apr 04
This week the folks at Facebook have teamed up with HTC to show off the first of what may be many Facebook Phones in what’s called the HTC first. This smartphone brings the full Facebook software experience to you in an Android-based user interface called “Facebook Home”. This smartphone is a mid-range unit when it comes to hardware specifications and will be offered in a variety of color casings.
With the HTC first you’ll be rolling out with a 4.3-inch LCD display with no less than 720p resolution for your everyday sharp Facebook interactions. This device will be rolling out with a lovely Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 dual-core processor, this being the same SoC that you’ll find on the Samsung Galaxy S III and the DROID RAZR HD. On the back of the HTC first you’ll find a 5-megapixel camera while the front works with a 1.6-megapixel camera for Facebook video chat and messages.
UPDATE: This device is NOT using the Snapdragon S4 as previously noted – instead it is one of the first devices on the market to be using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 400. This smartphone will also be coming with 3G/4G “multimode” LTE and will be available on the 12th of April for $99 USD attached to a 2-year contract.
You’ll be knocking out the apps with 1GB of RAM and a brand new user interface that’s based loosely on HTC’s own Sense 4.5. You’ll of course have wi-fi, 4G LTE from AT&T (at first, additional carriers on the way we must expect), and Android 4.1.2 right out of the box. We’ll be presenting some fabulous hands-on action with this device soon – there we’ll have additional insight in to how this device functions and if it’ll be the smartphone you’ve just got to have in 2013.
Have a peek at our Android Hub as well for more information on the Android universe at large! We’ll be bringing you more Android and Facebook Phone (and regular old Facebook) action all day – stick around and check the timeline below for updates, too!
HTC first official: Facebook Phone unveiled is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Apr 04
Meet The HTC First, The First Android Phone To Come Preloaded With Facebook Home
Posted in: Today's Chili
The torrent of leaks these past few days haven’t left much to the imagination, but HTC’s Peter Chou has just officially pulled back the curtain on the first phone to ship with Facebook Home — the HTC First — at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters.
According to HTC CEO Peter Chou the First will be the “ultimate social phone,” though he declined to dig into the device’s specs during his brief moments on-stage. The device will ship in four colors, and will support AT&T’s LTE network right out of the gate. Can’t wait for your chance to take it for a spin? The First will be available for $99 (with a 2 year contract naturally) starting on April 12, and pre-orders for the device kick off today. Those of you outside the U.S. will be able to join in the fun shortly too, as Mark Zuckerberg also noted that the phone would find its way to UK carriers Orange and EE in short order.
The mid-range First will be available in black, white, red and blue, and sports a 4.3-inch display that jibes with earlier reports. Facebook Home obviously serves to obscure the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean build that’s actually running the show, while one of Qualcomm’s dual-core Snapdragon 400 chipsets (and not the MSM8960 that was previously reported) provides the horsepower from inside that smooth, curved chassis. It’s not a bad looking phone and the internals aren’t quite as lousy as many had expected them to be, but all this begs a very important question — will anyone actually buy this phone when you can fire up Facebook Home on your (supported) Android handset for a whopping zero dollars?
I mean, c’mon — I’m a sucker for even mildly neat hardware, but so far neither HTC nor AT&T (whose CEOs both appeared on-stage to talk about how darned great the thing is) could provide a compelling reason why it’s worth buying. LTE? A handsome design? Neither of those are exactly hard to come by these days, are they? Facebook has said that the First will feature better integration for all those notifications you’re bound to get than if you had just installed the app, but at this point there’s little way of knowing how big a difference it’ll actually make. HTC knows how to make great hardware and I don’t mean to diminish that, but a lame device that’s been put together well is still a lame device.
This marks the second time that the social networking giant and the beleaguered Taiwanese OEM have collaborated on a peculiar hardware play. The first, if you’ll recall, were HTC Status (nee Chacha) and the Salsa released back in 2011– their main claim to fame was a dedicated Facebook button for quick access to your friends and feeds. Considering that neither device was exactly a runaway hit, it’s no surprise to see that Facebook and HTC have taken things in a different, more substantial direction with the One. Of course, the First is going to be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Facebook Home devices — Zuckerberg also pointed to a Facebook Home Program which allows hardware manufacturers to build Facebook Home into their own forthcoming handsets.
Apr 04
We’re here at Facebook’s phone event, where they just announced Facebook Home, a new home screen of sorts built for Android devices. The company is going a little deeper in depth on some of the new features, one of which is a new messaging system called Chat Heads, which essentially allows you to message your Facebook friends in a new way.
Facebook Chat Heads works in any app that you’re in, so if someone messages you while you’re playing around in another app, a “chat head” will pop up in the corner, letting you know that you received a message from this friend of yours. From there you can tap on the head to reply to the message.
Facebook addresses the problems with messaging on smartphones today, including the fact messaging is treated like “just another app.” This means that you’re switching between apps, which can become really annoying. Facebook notes that you should be talking to people, not apps.
You can also move the picture around to different parts of the screen, and when you’re done with the conversation, you can toss it off the screen to get it out of your way. It looks pretty slick, and really easy to use at that.
Facebook announces Chat Heads messaging service is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Apr 04
Mark Zuckerberg took the stage today at Facebook’s event. He stated that the social network is “not building a phone and not building an operating system”, but something that will make phones center around the people, instead of just the apps. He says that Facebook wants to build “the best experience for every person on every phone” He says, “You don’t need to fork android to do this, you don’t even need to modify the operating system.”
If Facebook were to build a phone, it would only bring a new experience to only 10-20 million people. But Zuckerberg states that that wouldn’t be fair for the billions of people that use the social network. He says that thanks to Android and its openness, Facebook is able to bring a brand new experience easily to a majority of its users.
So Facebook isn’t looking to build an operating system, but instead be an Android launcher. He focuses on “the home screen”, which is why the new app will be called “Home”. The new Facebook Home will allow users to easily access their Facebook app, but instead of just being an app, it will bring so much more to the user. You will be able to see your phone through people and not apps.
Facebook is bringing a brand new experience to all Android users in the form of “Facebook Home”. It will be include a bunch of new features not seen on the Facebook app, including “Cover Feed”. Check out all of the new features that will be coming with “Facebook Home” through our Facebook Tag Portal. Also, check out our Android Hub to find the latest, important news in the Android world.
Facebook “not building a phone and not building an operating system” is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Apr 04
Facebook Home Announced
Posted in: Today's Chili
“What if our phones were designed around people and not apps?” asked Mark Zuckerberg, and I guess he has the answer to that rhetorical question of his. In fact, Facebook has decided that the smartphone’s home screen should be more about content rather than a list of apps, but this paradigm shift will certainly take some getting used to, and I will be the first to admit that. Of course, there is also every possibility that this idea might catch up on desktop operating systems down the road, but that remains to be seen.
Facebook Home is the social network’s initiative to turn things upside down, where your friends’ updates will be seen in real-time on your device’s home screen. To “Like” a photo, all it takes is a double tap, and you’re good to go. Apart from that, swiping notifications might be something you as a social butterfly could get used to eventually, with Chat Heads being the “main course”, so to speak, of Facebook Home.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: LG Optimus 4X HD Gets Android 4.1 Jelly Bean In Europe, HTC One Developer Edition Arrives This April 19th, 
Apr 04
This week Facebook has revealed a software experience for any Android device they call “Home.” This experience is a family of apps for any Android device that’s been teased to work on not just the HTC device we’ve already been teased with, but any Android device you’ve got in your pocket right now. This system is build around people, not apps, as Zuckerberg spoke about, and is not a full re-work of Android.
With Cover Feed you’ll be seeing a selection of updates from your Friends. You’ve also got notifications as you’d have gotten before (if you’d had Facebook’s app working with notifications to Android), but here it’ll be appearing right from your Android lockscreen. This system is at it’s base a real Facebook-centric world for your Android smartphone.
With Home you’ll also have access to your normal Android apps. Your lockscreen shows you and your Facebook updates – one swipe up from your Facebook profile image and you’ve got your normal Android apps. Each of these apps load normally, using your smartphone as they normally would. One swipe back downward and you’re back to the lockscreen.
Chat Heads is a messaging system that takes on the full messaging world inside Facebook and applies the Home aesthetic. This system will be your one-stop-shop for talking to your friends on Facebook.
This is part of an ever-expanding world for Facebook on your smartphone that’ll be shown all day long here on SlashGear and through our own Android Hub – grab all the info you need there!
Facebook Home revealed: a family of apps for any Android device is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Apr 04
We’re here at Facebook’s phone announcement, and they haven’t yet announced anything, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg is on stage talking about phones and apps, and how people use their phones. Zuckerberg says that phones should be designed around people, and not the apps on the phones themselves, noting that Facebook wants to do that with smartphones today.
Zuckerberg is talking about turning Android phones into a more social platform, and he brings up the fact that with Android’s openness, along with Facebook’s connected platform, people are built around this kind of ecosystem, so it makes sense that Facebook is wanting to do something about this.
Since people spend their lives sharing information with one another, via Facebook in this case, Zuckerberg and company want to make it easier for users to do just that on Android devices. However, before you can do that though, you must make the phone about the user first, and not the apps themselves.
Since Facebook has over 1 billion users, the company not only wants to make a phone, but an entire ecosystem around that phone, and it seems like they can sell a lot of them, touting that average smartphone sales are anywhere from 10-20 million, but Facebook’s 1 billion users could easily surpass that.
Zuckerberg tips “phones designed around people, not apps” is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Apr 04
We’ve been talking about it for years now—half dread, half excitement—and now it’s no longer just our imaginations. The Facebook Phone is as real as it’s probably ever going to get: it’s called Facebook Home a complete Android takeover that converts your smartphone. More »
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