Hasta La Gadget!

You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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Business battles are often ecosystem battles, in which brands develop a matrix of conveniently connected products and services, in an attempt to lock customers into a dependency. Offline companies follow this tack (think razors and blades). But the internet, with its many connection nodes, crossovers to tangential realms and parallel on-ramps is where ecosystem wars are most elaborately waged.

Only rarely do market conditions cultivate a broader ambition in which a company has a chance to step beyond mere ecosystem competition to a higher level of sovereignty. Facebook’s imminent release of Home represents a stab at that rare imperialism.

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, HTC, Facebook

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In each issue of Distro, editor-in-chief Tim Stevens publishes a wrap-up of the week in news.

There’s a good chance 2011’s HTC Status, with its portrait QWERTY layout and dedicated Facebook button, never found its way into your social network. That last attempt at the mythical Facebook phone failed to garner much praise, but if social networks gave up so easily, well, we’d all still be using MySpace. HTC and Facebook are at it again, this week launching the $99 First, exclusively on AT&T in the US.

Yes, it’s a name every commenter could love (or hate).

Yes, it’s a name every commenter could love (or hate), a title cheekily reminiscent of the HTC One. This, though, is a rather different device, aiming more toward the mid-range and relying on some serious social integration to make it stand out. It’s the first phone running the Facebook Home interface, which will be available on many devices starting on April 12th. It delivers a far more comprehensive Facebook experience than the previous apps have managed, and intriguingly Zuckerberg himself said that Home is “the next version of Facebook.” The end of the web? Stay tuned.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Transportation, Internet, HTC, Facebook

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Shortly after Facebook’s big reveal this morning, we caught up with HTC President of Global Sales Jason McKenzie and spent a few minutes with him discussing the First. As expected, he was pretty excited about this collaboration between his company, Facebook and AT&T. Jason revealed to us that HTC’s strategy involves ultimately catering the First to hardcore (or at least frequent) users of the social network, whereas a device like the One will be more appealing to those who aren’t interested in staying constantly connected. Interestingly, HTC seems to have put Facebook in the driver’s seat here, as the First will not only come pre-loaded with Facebook Home (and its firmware optimizations), but no sign of Sense anywhere. It’s certainly a departure from HTC’s usual branding efforts, so it’ll be intriguing to see exactly how well the device sells on AT&T. We have our full interview with Jason below, so take a few minutes to get the First scoop.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, HTC, AT&T, Facebook

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Facebook wants to put Facebook Home on as many devices as possible, and that includes tablets — eventually. It just promised that tablets would get support, but only at some point in the months ahead. For now, it’s phones only. The social network hasn’t said which tablets might be at the forefront, although its plan to steadily widen hardware compatibility suggests that any support will evolve quickly.

Filed under: Tablets, Mobile, Facebook

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