We’ve spent the past few days running around with the Facebook Home-running HTC First. Here’s our review.

tl;dr: This pretty, lightweight phone is full of surprise and delight. Even the potentially annoying parts (like Chat Head pop-ups for SMS) were fun to use. The non-surprise is that you’ll see more of your Facebook news feed than ever before. Great for normal consumers of all kinds; maybe not so great as a work-first phone.

The hardware

It’s a small, slender phone.

From the start, it feels nothing like the unwieldy, massive-screen Android models that a lot of folks like me typically use.

But the screen resolution is crisp and beautiful (stick a pin in that). It’s unobtrusive, easily fitting into purses and pockets.

And yeah, you can insert your own casually sexist euphemism for how nicely it fits into a woman’s dainty hands here. But the same goes for how nicely it would fit into the smaller hands of a still-growing teen or tweenaged kid.

It’s a smallish phone. Whatever.

Aside from that, there’s nothing overwhelmingly remarkable about the hardware itself. It comes in four different colors, which is kinda cool until you consider the fact that you’ll probably end up popping a case on it anyhow.

The amazing-looking screen is important because of the wall-to-wall nature of the photo-laden homescreen. Once you put all your eggs in a GUI basket, you need a screen resolution that does the carefully crafted GUI justice.

From the outside, your average consumer would not notice anything special about the hardware. But that’s more or less irrelevant.

Home: How it actually works

Once you push the power button, however, the device becomes remarkable.

At startup, you’ll be asked to sign into both Facebook and Google. Then, your homescreen is turned into a full-screen application that displays your Facebook news feed in an entirely new way.

If your friend shares an image, that image takes up the entire screen of the little phone, filling it with story and life. Captions are discreetly overlaid on the images. If your friend shares a link or updates her status, you can read it, but there will still be a full-screen image in the background — something relevant from your friend’s photo collection on Facebook.

Each update fills the entire screen. When you swipe your finger left or right, you go to the next update in your feed. You can double-tap anywhere to “like” any status or image or link, and you can read and make comments directly from the homescreen. You can also tap through to the Facebook app or the mobile web browser on the phone to read more from any update.

In seconds, you can immerse yourself in your friends’ worlds in a very relaxed way, flitting through stories and letting the images wash over you. You barely realize how much of your feed you’re reading until you start seeing older stories you’d already seen on your desktop.

And that’s just the homescreen.

It’s important to note that this isn’t a lock screen or a typical homescreen widget. The full-screen version of Facebook’s news feed is your homescreen. It’s your wallpaper, but it’s interactive and based on what your friends are doing right now. And it’s surprisingly intuitive to use.

Beyond the homescreen

While this Facebook-flavored wallpaper is the star of the show, there’s more to explore. You can single-tap on any news feed item to bring up the rest of your phone’s software. Your own Facebook profile photo will appear in a little round bubble at the bottom of the screen.

If you swipe to the left, you get taken to Facebook Messaging. If you swipe to the right, you get taken to the last app you were using.

If you swipe up, you go to the “app drawer,” where all your non-Facebook apps live. This app launcher feels and looks exactly like a typical or stock Android app launcher. The average consumer won’t even know or care that it’s an app launcher or that it’s different. The app drawer has customization options; you can create multiple screens of the apps you use most. There’s also a catchall drawer for every app on the phone, sorted alphabetically.

In this sense, the Facebook Home-running First is a typical, normal Android phone — no surprises. But that’s not such a bad thing, given all the other bells and whistles present in Facebook Home. A little familiarity is a good thing.

The only real problem with the app drawer is that it takes an extra swipe to get there. It doesn’t seem like a big problem until you realize that you’ve accidentally swiped through 10 Facebook updates on your way to access Google Maps for directions to… where was it again? Oh my gosh, look! Jane and Moises had a baby!

A more immediate way to access your apps is notifications, no longer confined to teensy icons in the upper bar. Home’s notifications will appear on the homescreen in a neat stack, complete with thumbnails and previews of content, when available. You can double-tap on a notification to go to the app in question and see more, and you can swipe notifications to the right or left to clear them. Also, you can press and hold on the notifications to gather them into a stack and swipe all the notifications away at once.

Chat Heads

One of Facebook Home’s more controversial elements is Chat Heads, a feature that brings SMS and messaging to the forefront by placing little round bubbles over the rest of the interface anytime someone sends you a text message or Facebook message.

I thought it would be intensely annoying. But it’s surprisingly not. In fact, it ended up being playful and fun. You can move people’s heads around the screen and tap them to quickly see or respond to a message. Even ignoring people who text you is fun; just swipe ‘em to the bottom of the screen.

When you tap on a Chat Head, you can see all the conversations you’re having with someone in a single view and reply accordingly — or ignore it, swipe it away, and move on with your day.

Somehow, this seems like it’ll be a great feature for anti-social folks and chatterboxes alike.

Overall, a playful, social phone

As our time with the HTC review unit winds down, we’re a bit sad to see it go. It’s been a chirpy little funbox, constantly buzzing to life with new pictures and updates from friends around the globe. And by immersing us in more Facebook news feed items than we’d normally access, it’s made us feel more in touch with the networks we’ve built.

Using Facebook Home feels less like lugging around yet another mobile chore-monster and more like playing a lovely game, one with lots of ties to your real world of family and friends. Even the sound design is full of toy-like pops and snaps, organic-sounding noises that invite you to play.

At the device’s launch last week, the company repeated its primary, constant goal: to make the world a more connected place. The HTC First with Facebook Home definitely does that, and it does so in a gentle, delightful way.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Facebook describes its new Android app suite, Facebook Home, as “a new way to organize the information on your phone.”

That’s what Facebook product director Adam Mosseri told VentureBeat earlier this week. He’s right, to a point: The interface is novel.

But the idea of putting the information you care about most (pictures from your friends, Facebook updates, chat bubbles) right on your phone’s home screen and lock screen? Well, that isn’t new. Its most immediate antecedent is Windows Phone 8, which added a customizable lock screen, including the ability to show photos from your Facebook feed, in October, 2012.

Source: Microsoft

Microsoft’s Kin One and Kin Two were a commercial disaster, but showed the way for Windows Phone and Facebook Home.

In fact, Windows Phone has been organized around this principle since version 7, its modern overhaul. And before that, it was preceded by social-centric experiments Microsoft conducted with its ill-fated Kin phones, which were a commercial and critical disaster, but prefigured the company’s interest in putting social media front and center.

Android and iOS are centered on small app icons, with optional small “badges” that show a tidbit of information about the app, such as the number of unread email message. By contrast, Windows Phone 7 and 8 are organized around app tiles, which give more room to the app’s content. Instead of an icon showing a skeuomorphic picture of a desk calendar, Windows Phone’s calendar appear appears as a big rectangle, with most of the real estate given to showing the details of your next upcoming appointment.

That user-centric orientation made Windows Phone remarkably fun to use, in my experience. (At least until I got fed up with Nokia’s dysfunctional hardware and AT&T’s miserable policies.) Pulling out my phone and turning it on was no longer an exercise in getting some specific task done. It was a mini-surprise every time: Each time I took the phone out there was some new tidbit of information from my life or photo from the people I cared about.

I don’t want to overstate the significance of this change. It’s really only a tap or two from the home screen icon to the full Facebook feed in your Facebook app, no matter what phone OS you’re using. So it’s not going to make an enormous difference to the experience of using Facebook: It’s likely to be more or less the same on Android, iOS, Windows Phone, or Facebook Home phones.

But I suspect it will make the experience of using the phone subtly different, making it more and more into your primary hub for experiencing your social network. On Windows Phone, that could mean Skype, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. In the case of Facebook Home, that means Facebook, full stop.

If this is the future of phone OS design, and I think it is, then Facebook has just made an early and smart move. It has staked out a user-centric POV and associated it closely with its own network and brand.

Either that or it has just made its own version of the Microsoft Kin.

Facebook Home screenshot via Facebook.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

With all of Mark Zuckerberg’s talk about Facebook Home’s focus on people over apps, it’s easy to forget that Facebook holds something else above even people: advertising.

During a Q&A session with reporters today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg answered the question that’s been on all of our cynical minds: Will Facebook Home’s Cover Feed be home to advertisements?

Zuckerberg’s surprisingly direct response: Yup!

“There are no ads in this yet. I’m sure that one day there will be,” he told reporters

While Facebook is being uncharacteristically candid with its responses so far, it’s tough to see how it couldn’t be.  Facebook is set to suck up 30 percent of mobile ad dollars this year, so obviously, advertising will be a core part of its plans with Home.

Cover Feed will represent a particularly attractive bit of real estate for advertisers, as they can take advantage of the large smartphone home screens of Android devices.

Facebook, like Amazon, has caught onto a very clear reality: The smartphone and tablet lockscreen is a largely untapped market for a potentially lucrative sort of advertising. Just don’t expect Facebook to run around broadcasting its plans to the world. Cover Feed advertising is sure to be far more subtle than that.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

So what does Google think of Facebook Home? While the social network’s new Android skin shows just how flexible the OS can be, it also demonstrates how easily Google’s competitors can co-opt its own platform for their benefit.

We didn’t catch a whiff of resentment when we asked a Google spokesperson for comment on Facebook Home, but I can’t help but read their statement as if it were made through gritted teeth and a forced smile:

“The Android platform has spurred the development of hundreds of different types of devices. This latest collaboration demonstrates the openness and flexibility that has made Android so popular. And it’s a win for users who want a customized Facebook experience from Google Play — the heart of the Android ecosystem — along with their favorite Google services like Gmail, Search, and Google Maps.”

Google was conspicuously absent from today’s event, and I was surprised to find that the company’s flagship Nexus smartphone line won’t have support for Facebook Home when it’s released next week. Instead, Home will be available for recent devices from HTC and Samsung.

As I mentioned earlier today, it could be a sign that Google isn’t exactly pleased about what Facebook Home represents — that Android can be so easily skinned that you can forget it’s from Google. If Amazon’s Kindle Fire can take over the Android tablet market with a heavily modified OS, just imagine what Facebook Home will do when it’s freely available to millions of Android phone owners.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

They said a Facebook phone would never happen, but this is close enough! The company released Facebook Home today, an Android “skin” that puts Facebook at the forefront of your smartphone’s operating system.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook Home today in Menlo Park, Calif. It will launch on April 12 and brings your Facebook notifications, messages, Instagram uploads, and more to the home screen of your phone.

It also created Chat Heads, a notifications system that adds a small photo of your friend to your screen when they message you. You can view, respond, and throw away any messages you receive without leaving the app you’re in.

Alongside the Facebook Home skin, Android phone maker HTC introduced the HTC First, a dedicated phone that comes pre-loaded with Facebook Home. Sounds a lot like a Facebook phone to me. It will run on AT&T exclusively and is only $99.99.

You’ll be able to download Facebook Home right in the Google Play store and have the option to try it out or make the switch completely.

Check out Facebook Home and let us know what you think:

Images via Facebook

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Facebook Home may be a bold ploy to help Facebook take over all Android phones — but for now, the company is focusing on the above devices.

Facebook Home will be available on April 12 for Samsung’s Galaxy S III, Galaxy S IV, and Galaxy Note II, as well as HTC’s One X+ and upcoming One smartphone, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced at the company’s media event today. If you own one of those devices, you’ll be able to install Facebook Home right from the Google Play store (Facebook will also include a helpful link within the latest version of its Android app).

Zuckerberg also mentioned that plenty of other companies were interested in implementing Facebook Home, including Samsung, Orange, Qualcomm, Huawei, Sony, ZTE, Lenovo, and Sony.

Facebook is also launching a “Facebook Home Program” to help other manufacturers implement the software. The Home Program will be a sign to consumers that they’re getting the best Home experience possible, Zuckerberg said.

It’s interesting that Google’s Nexus 4 and Galaxy Nexus phones aren’t included in the list of supported Home devices. That could be a sign Google isn’t exactly pleased about what Facebook Home represents — that Android can be so easily skinned that you forget it’s from Google. It’s similar to the identity problem Google faced with Amazon’s Kindle Fire, except now millions of people will be able to download Facebook Home to the phones they already own.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

After many leaks, the first “Facebook phone” is finally here, and it’s fittingly called the HTC First.

Facebook has struggled over the years to make serious revenue from its mobile apps, but it recently started picking up momentum. But on top of smart third-party mobile apps, Facebook wants to make sure phones give its software top billing. So here comes the HTC First, a midrange smartphone with a custom skin of Android called “Facebook Home” that focuses on networking with your friends.

Facebook Home will be an experience available on several high-end Android phones (including the Samsung Galaxy S IV and HTC One) and starting April 12, but the HTC First will be the first smartphone to run it out of the box. On Facebook Home, the home screen shows your friends’ status updates and you can like and comment on those updates from there. It also lets you access Android apps from a customized app launcher.

“Our phones are designed around apps, not people, and we want to change that,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today at the event in Menlo Park, Calif. announcing the phone and software.

The HTC First will be available on AT&T in the U.S. and runs on its LTE network. It costs $100 with a two-year contract and will be available April 12.

It has a 4.3-inch display and dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor. The device will come in four colors — red, blue, white, and black.

You can preorder the phone starting today from AT&T. (This link isn’t live yet, but should be soon.)

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

MENLO PARK, Calif. — Facebook is taking over the Android operating system, the company announced this morning in a huge event at its headquarters.

What does that actually mean?

“Instead of our phones being designed around apps … we can flip that around and design our phones around people first,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The new Facebook Android plan isn’t an OS and isn’t a phone, he continued, but it’s “a whole lot deeper than an ordinary app.” Facebook is now providing a tone-setting homescreen that will make your Android phone a lot more personal. It’s a family of apps called “Home.”

He compared the new U.I. to the redesigned Facebook News Feed, which contains “all this fresh content that felt like home, that gave it a soul. … And as a result, we all started consuming a lot more overnight.”

Like News Feed, Timeline, and other recently designed Facebook experience, Home is extremely visual and features wall-to-wall images with overlaid text, kind of like you’d see in a high-quality magazine. All the apps you use are one swipe away, hidden under the splashy, people-focused overlay of images and notifications.

Messaging in particular has been pulled to the forefront. Rather than being one in a long line of apps you use, it gains prominence via an interface called “Chat Heads,” which works kind of like Pop-Up Video bubbles for your friends and messages. (We’ll have images coming soon.)

In a live demo, Facebook product director Adam Mosseri showed off some of Home’s features, saying that the designers have relied on simple, intuitive gestures and controls to compensate for removing standard Android navigation. To make sure you don’t miss out on anything important, notifications end up overlaid on your homescreen for your perusal and/or dismissal. And all the apps you still love that aren’t Facebook live in a traditional Android “app drawer.”

The highly anticipated Android-related announcement has had the Internet’s talking heads buzzing for a good couple weeks. The leaks around the announcement showed a new Facebook-themed interface and homescreen for Android phones. Our mobile expert, Devindra Hardawar, called the U.I. elegant enough to woo even those users who can’t stand Facebook.

This wouldn’t be the first time Facebook has focused a huge amount of attention, time, and effort on Android. The hacker-centric social network has put its engineering might behind Android’s code base in the past, even going so far as to offer Google an OS-saving patch in its hour of need. Why outsiders might assume an expected level of enmity between the two companies — Facebook and Google — as they begin to compete more on a social (and identity) battleground, their relationship is actually a bit more symbiotic, at least when it comes to Android.

“We’re a very significant app to them, and they’re a very significant platform to us,” said Facebook engineering lead Mike Shaver in a recent chat.

“What we have right now is an Android operating system with hundreds of millions of users that can have a great social experience,” said Shaver. “That’s the part we’re focused on.”

To get Facebook Home now, just open up Facebook Messenger on your Android phone; it’ll prompt you to download the new app. Tablet versions of Home will be available in several months.

The new Home app bundle will be available for some devices starting today, Zuckerberg said. April 12 will be the start date for the larger rollout, when you can download Home directly from Android Play.

Also, HTC and AT&T are partnering with Facebook to build Facebook Home-focused hardware. See our related coverage.

Additional reporting by Meghan Kelly

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

And the Facebook Home/Facebook Phone leaks keep on coming.

Now we have our first glimpse at Facebook Home’s user interface, courtesy of 9to5Google. Surprisingly, it seems that it’s more focused on delivering a great-looking Android experience, while much of the social functionality is subtly baked into the interface.

While there’s been plenty of hype around the Facebook Phone — which at this point looks like it’s going to be the HTC First — it’s becoming increasingly clear that Facebook Home will be the star of tomorrow’s Facebook event.

As we saw from the leak a few days ago, Facebook Home will likely be a downloadable Android home screen replacement that anyone can download to their phone. The HTC First, meanwhile, will have the privilege of being the very first phone to come with Facebook Home built-in (I can only imagine how proud the HTC folks were for coming up with that name).

Judging from these screenshots, Facebook Home’s clean design will be its main selling point, while the enhanced social features will serve as a nice addition. (Making the social integration secondary also makes it easier for consumers to ignore the bigger presence Facebook will have on their phones.)

While Google has made great strides with evolving Android’s user interface over the past few years, many Android owners are still stuck running ugly Android skins from the likes of Samsung and HTC. It’s unclear how Facebook Home will coexist with HTC Sense or Samsung’s TouchWiz interface (HTC will certainly make sure it can fit in sense alongside Facebook Home).

One thing’s for sure though: Plenty of Android owners would leap at the opportunity for a better user interface, especially if it’s a simple download from the Google Play store.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

At this rate, Facebook may not have many surprises left in store for its Thursday Android event.

Android Police has gotten its hands on a system dump from the purported Facebook phone, which suggests plenty of the earlier Facebook phone rumors are accurate.

For one, it suggests that the HTC-built Facebook phone is a reality. The leak describes a mid-range device for AT&T dubbed the “HTC Myst,” which has a dual-core processor, a 4.3-inch screen, and a 720p resolution, matching specs leaked a few weeks ago.

Clearly, Facebook isn’t going after the iPhone 5 and powerful Android phones — instead, the HTC Myst sounds like an affordable device for teenagers and the less tech-savvy.

The leak also describes a new Facebook Android app called “Facebook Home.” Taking advantage of the full customizability of Android, Facebook Home appears to be a complete replacement for the traditional Android home screen (something that TechCrunch reported last week). It also looks like it won’t be exclusive to the HTC Myst — according to privacy permissions from the leak, Android Police notes that Facebook will likely offer Facebook Home on the Google Play store for other Android devices.

I’m no fan of the Facebook phone concept, but as we approach Facebook’s event this week, it seems clearer than ever that the Facebook Phone will be more a proof of concept than a device meant to sweep the marketplace. Much like Google’s Nexus phones, the HTC Myst will likely represent an ideal way for manufacturers to implement Facebook Home.

Facebook Home will make the social network an even more integral part of your life. It’s also worth noting that Facebook Home is something that’s only possible on Android, since Apple doesn’t allow any sort of homescreen replacement on iOS.

Since it’s in Facebook’s best interest for users to be running Android, rather than iOS, I have a feeling the company will begin actively trying to tempt users over to Google’s platform. Facebook Home is just the start.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Those Facebook phone rumors are back again — except this time, they may be valid. Still, as we approach the possible unveiling of this curious device, a big question remains: Will anyone actually need this thing?

Facebook sent out invites yesterday for an April 4 event at its headquarters, inviting the media to “come see our new home on Android.” The company will likely use the event to unveil a HTC-built phone with a heavily modified, Facebook-friendly Android operating system, TechCrunch reports.

Around the same time yesterday, 9to5Google reported that Facebook was gearing up to launch a phone with HTC and that the two companies are also working on a huge marketing campaign in Southern California. The pitch? “More than just an app.”

Why Facebook wants a phone

I explained why Facebook doesn’t actually need a phone a year ago — though I noted that the company will still try to make one work anyway. Facebook’s apps are already among the most popular on Android and iOS, and it’s going to have a hard time convincing people to give up the devices they’re already used to. At that point, mobile was still a pretty big risk for Facebook — but since then the company has managed to grow its mobile revenues dramatically.

Strangely, the case for Facebook making a phone today is stronger than when it was struggling to make a buck from mobile. The company will need new and innovative ways to grow its mobile revenues — and now it’s clear that its mobile ad strategy works.

Why you won’t want a Facebook phone

But as the Facebook phone comes into focus, it makes even less sense for users. According to 9to5Google’s sources, it will look a lot like the iPhone 5, and it will feature all of Facebook’s services — photo uploading, messaging, contacts integration, and more — integrated throughout the operating system.

That sounds like a nice social utopia, but it will likely mean even more restrictions for consumers. (I wouldn’t be surprised if the Facebook phone completely blocked access to competing social networks like Google+ and LinkedIn.) And will saving a few taps and clicks really entice you to dump your beloved iPhone or Android phone?

The Facebook phone’s biggest potential issue is that it simply isn’t solving anything for anyone besides Facebook.

The company’s first stab at a branded phone with deep social integration, the Inq Cloud Touch, didn’t really go anywhere. The Inq Cloud Q, a Facebook-integrated phone with a hardware keyboard, didn’t even reach store shelves. A survey by analyst firm Robert W. Baird also indicated that only 7 percent of consumers wanted a Facebook phone, while 51 percent were interested in an Amazon smartphone.

Like many of Facebook’s services, a Facebook phone would also serve as another way for the company to collect personal information about its users. But while it’s not tough for the company to pitch free new features like Timeline, which offers useful functionality while also serving as a conduit for tracking more personal information, it’ll likely be much more difficult to take the same approach with a device you’ll have to pay for.

Photo via Johan Larson/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Last week, Facebook invited members of the press to a special event at its corporate headquarters in Menlo Park, CA on Tuesday. These sorts of invites are rare for Facebook, and so speculation is growing about what the company is planning.

Some noted that the invite came just minutes after rumors of a cheaper iPhone hit the web — leading them to wonder whether Facebook is doing something in the phone area. After all, Facebook’s lack of monetization on the mobile phone remains one of its biggest challenges, and one that most people attribute to causing the sharp plunge in Facebook’s stock price last year. Indeed, Facebook’s stock is still way down from where it was in May when it first went public. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in attempt to reassure the market, has responded all along that investors do not fully appreciate what Facebook has been working on, and to stay tuned. Well, now six months later, the market is primed to see something big in this area.

But the fact is no one knows what Facebook has planned for Tuesday.

Writer and investor MG Siegler cites multiple sources while saying Facebook will announce some sort of Facebook phone, but adds the caveat that it’s unlikely to include any sort of hardware that Facebook has built. Indeed, in the past, Facebook has insisted it won’t get into the hardware business. It’s more likely that Facebook will show off some sort of Facebook OS, Siegler says, but concedes he’s far from certain about this.

And there were the reports, which we followed in April of last year, of a “Facebook phone” supposedly being built by HTC. The rumor was first aired by Digitimes, far from the most accurate source out there, but onlookers did sees some logic in such a phone: HTC has been struggling as a smartphone manufacturer, getting beaten solidly by Samsung and others. A closer alliance with Facebook by HTC, similar to how HTC warmed up with Google to showcase the earliest Android phones, might make sense for HTC, and it might have offered Facebook attractive terms to do so. What form this might take is unknown, but presumably some sort of extra tight integration between Facebook and the underlying hardware.

If this is the season for speculation, we’ll jump in too. From our standpoint, what Facebook needs badly is to find a way to make money from mobile in ways that the existing advertising industry has failed to do. Despite the incredibly impressive consumer adoption of smartphones, app publishers like Facebook have been left in the cold, because banner advertising hasn’t worked on the small form factor of the phone. Other forms of monetization have come up short too. Only the carriers, chip makers, manufacturers like Apple and Samsung and a few others, have made serious cash off of mobile. Another thing that haunts Facebook is its HTML5 mobile app experience. Early on, Facebook bet heavy on HTML5, but later called it one of its biggest mistakes. So while I also have no idea what Facebook will announce, I’d like to think it would be something to aide the Facebook application’s integration or standing in the existing mobile landscape in a big way, for example a smoother HTML5 experience, perhaps in coordination with a constellation of carrier networks and phone chip makers. Or something that will help Facebook break the monetization logjam, by making it easier to serve compelling ads dynamically.

Don’t get your hopes up too high. The invitation simply says “Come and see what we’re building,” and it led one of our writers to think that Facebook is merely inviting the press to see the new headquarters it has been building out. That would be a lot less exciting, but plausible. One of the biggest challenges Facebook has on its hands is hiring talented engineers. Amid a flagging stock price, and highly competitive players like Apple and Google poaching the same engineers, a showing of its new headquarters by Facebook would be a mundane but sensible way to try to lure that talent.

Stay tuned for live reporting on Tuesday.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

A year ago, the team at Inq made an extremely tough decision. After spending years working on mobile hardware, including a “Facebook phone” of sorts, it decided to focus exclusively on mobile software.

Inq is probably best known as the manufacturer of the so-called “Facebook phone” back in 2011, a smartphone that offered extensive Facebook social integration — and not officially branded by the social network giant. But in early 2012, Inq’s endeavors to build Android phones went completely bust.

Now, with its soon-to-launch social news app Material, Inq can finally show what it’s been working on all this time.

“We’ve finished up with hardware a year ago, and we’ve been working our app engine since then,” Inq CEO and cofounder Ken Johnstone said last night at a CES 2013 event.

The 45-employee Inq team has been working hard on a “topic extraction engine” that powers Material’s backend, which will eventually power other Inq apps. Like Flipboard, the relatively new Grokr, and other social news apps, Inq’s Material recommends news using what’s happening in your Facebook and Twitter feeds on a daily basis. And while your “interests” change every day depending on your activity, it has an option to can make interests permanent.

Material also “learns with you”: If you are reading a certain topic every day, it prioritizes that topic higher in your feed. Say you follow a sports team on Facebook or Twitter; Material knows to give you important updates about that team. But when the offseason hits and news is sparse, Material won’t give you updates unless big news surfaces about your team.

I looked at Material last night, and it appears quite polished. My favorite aspect of the app was the design, which bursts with color and beautiful photos. Johnstone, who was previously the product and design director of Inq before he was elevated to CEO, said his career background contributed to the decision to make design a priority.

“We liken this to the publishing world,” Johnstone said. “Focusing on design is so important for magazines, for example. We want the design to be well done and the barrier to entry low. It makes the app very easy to get into.”

Material will launch in the next few weeks on Android, and be available on iOS in a few months, according to Johnstone. We will take a closer look at the app once it becomes available to consumers.

Inq is a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa and was founded in 2008.

Check out more photos of Material below.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

It’s not too shocking to think that Apple’s next iPhone will leapfrog last year’s iPhone 4S in sales — the real question is by how much.

Based on a recent survey of 2,000 consumers, Robert W. Baird analyst William Power predicts that Apple could sell more than 50 million iPhone 5 units in the U.S alone, Barrons reports. That’s a pretty big leap from the 37 million iPhone 4S units Apple sold worldwide during its launch quarter last year.

The Baird survey found that 39 percent of respondents were eligible for a phone upgrade (6 percent will be eligible in three months), and of that cross-section 45 percent planned to purchase an iPhone. Meanwhile, only 22 percent of potential phone buyers wanted an Android device (and 31 percent were still undecided).

The disparity isn’t surprising: An insurmountable amount of hype surrounds the iPhone 5 now, while I can’t think of any comparable Android device releases coming anytime soon (though maybe Motorola could change our minds when it unveils the Droid Razr HD). At this point, I can’t help but feel prematurely sorry for Nokia’s upcoming Windows Phone 8 devices, which will be announced in early September (likely a week before the iPhone 5).

Power’s survey also found that iPhone users were the most loyal to their platform, with 77 percent saying they’d buy another iPhone. Only 48 percent of Android users said they’d be sticking with Google’s platform. Notably, 17 percent of current Android owners were interested in jumping ship to the iPhone.

Another interesting find: The survey noted that 51 percent of consumers were interested in an Amazon smartphone, while only 7 percent wanted a Facebook phone. Judging from reports, Facebook is indeed working toward building some sort of phone, though I really don’t think it needs one.

Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 5 (or whatever it ends up being called) at a September 12 event, with a release to follow on September 21. That date seems particularly solid now that we’ve heard Verizon and AT&T are blocking out vacation times for employees around September 21.

iPhone 5 mockup via iLabFactory

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Facebook building a phone “wouldn’t really make much sense for us to do,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today during the company’s first-ever earnings conference call.

Today, the social networking behemoth posted $1.18 billion in revenue and a net loss of $157 million for the second quarter of 2012. But investors didn’t like what they saw — Facebook’s shares plunged more than 10 percent in after-hours trading.

One thing that could help calm those investors is a more comprehensive mobile strategy. Speculation has been flying about Facebook developing its own smartphone or phone-focused software. Zuck might be playing with semantics, because a Facebook-focused OS could make a lot of sense for the company and he didn’t rule that out.

Responding to questions about Facebook’s mobile strategy, Zuckerberg said:

“We want to not just have apps that people use, but also be as deeply integrated into these systems as possible. We want to support a development ecosystem where other apps can build on top of Facebook, so that’s why you’ll see us do things like support Apple in the iOS integration that they wanted to do. There are lots of things that you can build in other operating systems as well that aren’t really like building out a whole phone, which I think wouldn’t really make much sense for us to do. So I do think that there’s a big opportunity for us here.”

Research in Motion fans (if there are any left), you can breathe easy.

Zuckerberg photo: Jolie O’Dell/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

With Facebook’s recent unveiling of a camera app for the iPhone, as well as a universal app store, it’s becoming clearer to me that even if the company is planning a phone of its own, it likely won’t be as big a deal as we think.

Instead, Facebook is continually proving that every phone is a Facebook phone — or at least, every phone that can run Facebook’s apps, which includes the iPhone, Android devices, and Windows Phones. That seems a far better strategy for the company too, as Facebook likely won’t have a chance in hell to pry consumers away from their existing smartphone platforms.

Nevertheless, the company knows that mobile is its greatest vulnerability, and for that reason, Facebook is probably going to try making a phone of its own, anyway.

A rising popularity in Facebook mobile consumption led the company to list mobile as a major risk before it went public. The average Facebook user spent 441 minutes (7 hours and 21 minutes) accessing the site on mobile, but it still doesn’t have a good way to monetize mobile users, the company revealed in its updated S-1 filing before its IPO earlier this month.

A Facebook phone likely won’t make a dent against all those users already using Facebook on their phones — and I don’t think that’s what the company wants anyway. Facebook wouldn’t spend $1 billion on Instagram, the wildly popular photo-sharing app on the iPhone and Android, if it aimed to actually kill other mobile platforms.

Now I won’t deny that a Facebook phone will happen at some point. We’ve been hearing about such a device for some time — most recently, it’s gone by the codename “Buffy” and is said to be developed by HTC — and it makes sense for Facebook to want a device entirely its own. But if anything, it’ll likely be a cheap mid-range Android phone that will appeal to teenagers and emerging markets, and not something that will compete with high-end smartphones. I’d imagine it would be similar to Inq’s Facebook-focused phones, though that company ended up cancelling one of its upcoming models.

Much as Amazon has offered a completely different spin on Android with the Kindle Fire, Facebook’s phone would be a cheap and easy way for its users to climb aboard mobile. (And the fact that it will lock those users into Facebook’s ecosystem is a nice plus.)

Business Insider’s Jay Yarow points out that with all of its recent apps, it looks like Facebook is putting together all of the core components of its phone right in front of us. The Facebook Camera app could easily be the primary camera app on the Facebook phone, and Facebook Messages could serve as main messaging app as well (just like iMessages, Facebook could use the app to handle both SMS and its own messages). Of course, those apps also serve as a perfect way to distract users from built-in apps on their smartphones.

Yarow also points to Facebook’s rumored interest in purchasing Opera, which would give it a powerful web browser of its own. While that’s one possibility, I view Facebook’s interest in Opera in another way: It’s the perfect way for Facebook to steal consumers away from mobile Safari on the iPhone and Android’s browsers (which includes the original Android browser and Chrome for Android).

If you own the browser, you own the web.

Opera could also serve as the perfect engine for a hyper-social web browser that’s intimately connected with all of Facebook’s services. It’s also a particularly interesting on the iPhone, as it’s the only third-party browser that isn’t forced to use Apple’s WebKit framework. Opera compresses web content on its servers before pushing it to your device, so it bypasses Apple’s restrictions on third-party browsers. That makes Opera on the iPhone faster than mobile Safari as well, and it could allow Facebook to build a truly interesting browser of its own with Opera’s tech.

Update: Well fancy that, now Nick Bilton at the New York Times is reporting more details on the potential Facebook phone. Facebook has hired more than half a dozen former Apple engineers who worked on software and hardware for the iPhone, as well someone who worked on the iPad, the paper reports.

Photo via Johan Larsson/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

With Google and Samsung’s partnership on the Nexus line of devices taking up most of the search giant’s time, former handset partner HTC is apparently working with Facebook on a brand new smartphone, according to a Digitimes report citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.

Rumors of a Facebook phone first resurfaced back in November. The device was loosely being referred to as the “Buffy” phone, which would run a heavily modified version of Android featuring support for apps developed in HTML5. The device was also rumored to be due out in 18 months. If true, today’s report by Digitimes would mean that the phone is ahead of schedule, with a retail launch date during the third quarter of 2012.

There are a few reasons why this news would make sense for both Facebook and HTC. First of all HTC previously launched two Facebook-enabled handsets, the Salsa and Chacha, so it’s definitely proven it has the vision to develop a true “Facebook Phone.”

Another big reason this partnership might actually happen has to do with the Facebook’s huge mobile risk as it prepares to make an initial public offering. Even if they phone sucks, it would probably still sell pretty well, and it would give Facebook some concrete footing when it comes to its ability to generate revenue on mobile devices.

Image via Gizmodo

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

One of the biggest risks Facebook listed in yesterday’s high-profile IPO filing was “mobile.” The company hasn’t quite figured out what to do with advertising on phones, so it could struggle to bring in the bank as more users choose phones over PCs.

But Chris Silva, mobile analyst for Altimeter Group, told VentureBeat that the company has a possible way to help solve this issue: the highly rumored “Facebook phone.”

“If they are taking this risk as seriously as they should, a mobile product with Facebook branding is a big way to mitigate that risk,” Silva said. “All they need is a hardware partner and to optimize the experience with Facebook features.”

Facebook indicated in its S-1 filing yesterday that 425 million monthly active users are mobile, so targeting those users on a Facebook-branded phone makes sense. In regards to risk, Facebook said:

Growth in use of Facebook through our mobile products, where we do not currently display ads, as a substitute for use on personal computers may negatively affect our revenue and financial results.

We had more than 425 million MAUs who used Facebook mobile products in December 2011. We anticipate that the rate of growth in mobile users will continue to exceed the growth rate of our overall MAUs for the foreseeable future, in part due to our focus on developing mobile products to encourage mobile usage of Facebook. Although the substantial majority of our mobile users also access and engage with Facebook on personal computers where we display advertising, our users could decide to increasingly access our products primarily through mobile devices. We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven. Accordingly, if users continue to increasingly access Facebook mobile products as a substitute for access through personal computers, and if we are unable to successfully implement monetization strategies for our mobile users, our revenue and financial results may be negatively affected.

There is no guarantee that popular mobile devices will continue to feature Facebook, or that mobile device users will continue to use Facebook rather than competing products. We are dependent on the interoperability of Facebook with popular mobile operating systems that we do not control, such as Android and iOS, and any changes in such systems that degrade our products’ functionality or give preferential treatment to competitive products could adversely affect Facebook usage on mobile devices. Additionally, in order to deliver high quality mobile products, it is important that our products work well with a range of mobile technologies, systems, networks, and standards that we do not control. We may not be successful in developing relationships with key participants in the mobile industry or in developing products that operate effectively with these technologies, systems, networks, or standards. In the event that it is more difficult for our users to access and use Facebook on their mobile devices, or if our users choose not to access or use Facebook on their mobile devices or use mobile products that do not offer access to Facebook, our user growth and user engagement could be harmed.

The rumors about the “Facebook phone” took on a new degree of certainty back in mid-November when AllThingsD ran a series of reports about the upcoming device. It said the phone, called “Buffy”, would launch within 18 months of that time and be manufactured by HTC. It also delved into background about how the phone started as a highly controversial project within Facebook’s walls.

Silva agreed with the prior rumors about Taiwan’s HTC being a likely candidate, but he also said manufacturers like South Korea’s LG and China’s ZTE would be good choices as well.

“With Google and Motorola being so cozy, other Android phone manufacturers have to be looking at this as an option to differentiate themselves,” Silva said.

Features that the phone could include could simply be optimized Android software that emphasizes the Facebook experience. Or it could go further, with hardware-powered features such as NFC-enabled ability to “friend” someone you meet while out and about.

Facebook will have to be cautious about how it approaches the mobile handset market though, or else its phone will end up being yet another aspect of mobile weighing it down.

Facebook on Android phone photo: Johan Larsson/Flickr

We’ve learned this morning that Buffy started out as Slayer, a highly controversial project within Facebook’s walls that led to more than one Facebooker leaving the company entirely.

All Things D reports that the original code name for Facebook’s ambitious mobile project was Slayer — a portmanteau of the phrase “social layer.”

The project, which D says started around 18 months ago, was the brainchild of a mobile-focused, hand-picked SWAT team of sorts that worked under the greatest secrecy. The team, which included Facebook iPhone app and Firefox creator Joe Hewitt, was trying to integrate Facebook’s social features with mobile hardware more deeply than any OEM or mobile carrier had done to date.

The team was cherry-picked from among Facebook’s army of brilliant minds, and team members were in discussions with companies such as AT&T and Intel to determine how the new phones would be built and subsidized.

But D’s Facebook sources said the project grew “too big and too political,” causing some Facebookers to temporarily or permanently leave the company’s Palo Alto campus. Hewitt himself left the company in May 2011.

Buffy, the toned-down and much less metal codename for the resurrected mobile project spearheaded by Facebook CTO Bret Taylor, will run a heavily modified version of the Android OS and will feature support for HTML5 mobile web apps.

Buffy may be released within the next year to 18 months.

We first got wind of the Facebook phone project back in September 2010. At that time, Facebook stringently denied working on a standalone phone. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg made some equivocating statements that kept the rumor mill running.

Then, earlier this year, Facebook and INQ unveiled a “Facebook phone” of sorts, the Cloud Touch and Cloud Q. These Android devices showed some thoughtful Facebook integrations, but they were not the deep and wide integrations most folks were expecting, nor were they branded as Facebook products.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for more clarification and will post again when we have the full story.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The rumored Facebook phone is real and will be manufactured by HTC under the codename “Buffy,” anonymous sources have told AllThingsD.

Although the news site doesn’t indicate where its information comes from, it must have more to report, because this is the first of what AllThingsD says will be a week-long series on the mysterious device. The so-called “Facebook phone” has been at the heart of rampant speculation for more than two years, although the only devices to emerge so far have been fairly standard Android or feature phones with Facebook features slapped on.

“Buffy,” if real, is named after the famous vampire slayer featured in a movie and a long-running television series.

The Buffy phone will run a heavily modified version of Android featuring support for apps developed in HTML5, and could see the light of day in a year to 18 months, according to writers Liz Gannes and Ina Fried.

AllThingsD quoted a Facebook spokesperson who declined to comment directly on the phone, but said:

Our mobile strategy is simple: We think every mobile device is better if it is deeply social. We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers to bring powerful social experiences to more people around the world.

This jibes with Facebook’s overall strategy of putting social features at the heart of an experience, as opposed to layering them on later.

Facebook is the single most popular app in the iTunes App Store, and the social networking giant has more than 350 million mobile users across all platforms.

Buffy image via Zoe Favole/Flickr

Microsoft’s Kinectified game business grows 55 percent — fastest-selling consumer electronics device in history — Call it Kinectification. Microsoft said Thursday that its video-game business grew dramatically thanks to sales of its Kinect motion-sensing system.

What you should know about LinkedIn’s IPO — We look at some of the most significant facts about the professional networking company and its IPO plans.

Sean Parker says he enjoyed The Social Network film, but “it’s complete fiction” — Parker, who was depicted by Justin Timberlake in the movie, said his life was over-glamorized, and that the film inaccurately describes how he treated Facebook co-founder, Eduardo Saverin.

Motorola’s Xoom tablet landing at Best Buy Feb. 17 for $700 — Looking to get your hands on the best-looking Android tablet from CES? You won’t have to wait much longer.

Facebook phone from HTC rumored to debut next month — Here we go again: Rumors of a potential Facebook phone have emerged once more.

And here are five more posts we think are important, thought-provoking, fun, or all of the above:

Obama urges 80 percent clean energy by 2035, gives electric cars a shoutout — In his state of the union address Tuesday night, President Obama called for an end to oil subsidies and set a national goal of reaching 80 percent clean energy by 2035.

You know what’s cool? 8 Oscar nominations for The Social Network– That the film was well-received by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences comes as no surprise — The Social Network was a critical darling, and it also walked away with four Golden Globe awards, including Best Picture.

Facebook CTO: 2011 is all about mobile and HTML5 — Facebook may be the most-downloaded free application on the iPhone, but the company’s chief technology officer Bret Taylor seems more excited about the opportunities offered by the mobile Web and HTML5.

Kongregate takes another crack at launching online arcade on Android — It’s round two in the Google versus Kongregate mobile arcade match — and hopefully there will be less drama this time around.

Eric Schmidt sees next decade as age of “augmented humanity” — Eric Schmidt may not be chief executive of Google for long (he turns that title over to Larry Page on April 4). But he isn’t going to stop sharing his vision for the future.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Is Facebook building a mobile phone? Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg says no. Or maybe. It depends on your definition of “build”. And “phone”.

Boy, I’m glad we cleared that up.

Zuckerberg spoke to TechCrunch in the aftermath of this weekend’s cranky back-and-forth between the tech blog and the company’s PR team about whether or not Facebook is building a phone. Echoing Facebook’s earlier denials, Zuckerberg says the company isn’t manufacturing a device:

At the end of the day, when people say “building a phone” they actually can mean very different things. Internally, the way we talk about our strategy, it’s like the opposite of that. Our whole strategy is not to build any specific device or integration or anything like that. Because we’re not trying to compete with Apple or the Droid or any other hardware manufacturer for that matter.

Note the equivocation implied in the comment that “building a phone” can “mean very different things.” Later in the interview, TechCrunch asks specifically if Facebook is building a mobile operating system, and Zuckerberg says no. But then he starts talking about grey areas:

When you get into the definition of what building a phone is, there are all these different things, which I think is the grey area, where, actually, sometimes even people internally refer to stuff as ‘Facebook phones’.

There’s the Apple approach of really designing all the hardware – I don’t think that they manufacture it themselves, but they probably work very closely with Foxconn – but they do have chip design and all of that in-house, I’ll bet we’ll never do anything like that. That is different from what we do.

And just from the 6 years of experience we’ve had building Facebook, which is a pretty complex system, you can’t just wake up one day and decide you want to do this stuff. Even building a whole operating system is, like years and years of work. So that is what Google does.

And Google has been in a bunch of different places. Nexus One, I think people would say they built that phone a bit more, but the Droid, I don’t think you could consider that is a phone that Google built, but some people would. I think what you’ll find is that all of this stuff that we do, is lighter than all of those things.

So even though you (probably) won’t be able to buy a Facebook-brand phone, the company is working on a project or projects that some of its own employees call the Facebook phone. As for what those projects entail, well, that’s still mysterious. But you wouldn’t call it a Facebook phone if it wasn’t pretty darn significant, or at least potentially significant, would you?

Besides addressing the rumors, Zuckerberg talks more generally about Facebook’s mobile strategy. The main message is one we’ve been hearing for a while, that Facebook wants to become the social platform for other mobile apps.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Although Facebook has emphatically denied the report, Techcrunch insisted in a story today that Facebook is working on building a mobile phone.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company reportedly became concerned about the growing power of Apple and Google with the rise of the iPhone and Android platforms. Making apps alone, the report said, may not be enough to counter a competitive threat.

A spokeswoman for Facebook denied the report, saying to Mashable, “The story, which originated in Techcrunch, is not accurate. Facebook is not building a phone. Our approach has always been to make phones and apps more social. Current projects include include everything from an HTML5 version of the site to apps on major platforms to full Connect support with SDKs to deeper integrations with some manufacturers. Our view is that almost all experiences would be better if they were social, so integrating deeply into existing platforms and operating systems is a good way to enable this. For an example, check out Connect for iPhone and the integration we have with contact syncing through our iPhone app. Another example is the INQ1 phone with Facebook integration (the first so-called ‘Facebook Phone’). The people mentioned in the story are working on these projects. The bottom line is that whenever we work on a deep integration, people want to call it a ‘Facebook Phone’ because that’s such an attractive soundbite, but building phones is just not what we do.”

The story said that two high-level Facebook employees, Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakikos, are working on the project. There weren’t many more details than that. Silicon Alley Insider also reported that it heard similar rumors about a Facebook phone, using the very Google Android operating system that Facebook reportedly fears will become too powerful. Techcrunch has another post talking about why its report is correct despite the Facebook denial.

Erick Tseng, the former Google Android exec who joined Facebook as head of mobile earlier this year, revealed Facebook’s mobile plans at MobileBeat 2010. As he articulated the plan, it was basically Facebook Connect for Mobile on all phones, not a Facebook Phone. He also said that all features of Facebook Web API would be on mobile.