More signs today the HTC First might also be the last smartphone to ship with Facebook Home pre-installed: UK carrier EE confirmed today that the first Facebook Home phone won’t be launching in the UK soon as planned, as Facebook has decided to concentrate its efforts on making improvements to the Home software before looking to add international markets. EE says it will soon be contacting… → Read More
Facebook may be trying to sweeten the deal to get Home into more hands, or AT&T and HTC might just want their money. But for some reason, the Facebook Phone aka the HTC First’s price has dropped from $99 to $0.99 on contract less than a month after its debut. Considering it comes with unbloated stock Android and a speedy LTE connection, that could be a bargain. → Read More
Why trust one reviewer to tell you what phone to buy? Better to get a consensus, and across reviews by seven leading publications the verdict is that the HTC First features a stylish yet casual design, efficient messaging, reliable battery, and an addictive feed-reading experience. But its “apperating system” is confusing, the camera fails in low light, it sacrifices widgets, and has privacy… → Read More
“This is not a Facebook Phone.” Yeah, whatever. The HTC First is the first phone that has Facebook partnering up with an OEM to bake an Android pie with Facebook Home filling, so I’m calling it the Facebook Phone. There will be more. This is just the first. And guess what?
It’s really good. → Read More
After years of rumors, the Facebook Phone aka the HTC First finally launches April 12th for $99 on AT&T. It’s light and supple, plus comes with a suped-up version of Facebook Home pre-installed that pipes in non-Facebook notifications, but the 5MP Camera is a let down. If you’re highly social, want a mid-range handset, crave email alerts, and aren’t a photo buff, the First could be a great… → Read More
Android users will get the chance to try out the official public release of Facebook Home later this week, but if anyone is really impatient a beta version has leaked and is available to try now. MoDaCo has published the beta (which is actually made up of three separate APKs covering the Facebook app itself, a new Messenger app and the Home/launcher app. → Read More
An app on a smartphone is a limited vessel, one that can provide content and information for your audience, but within bounds set out by the operating system. People still have to navigate to your app, and therefore there’s a time when they’re “in” your product or service, and a time when they’re “out” of said product or service. Facebook clearly demonstrated last week that it wants to own that… → Read More
Single-tasking has been a hallmark of mobile. But Facebook Home lets you chat in an overlaid drop-down window as you use Google, Yelp, Maps or any other app, bringing the productivity of the desktop to the small screen. Home’s cover feed and responsive design are nice, but you could call them mediocre. Chat multi-tasking, though, merges the communication and computing sides of the smartphone. → Read More
Just a day after announcing a new Android skin in the form of Facebook Home, the company has issued a FAQ regarding Facebook Home and privacy. → Read More
This week on the TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast we talk about bold moves by Verizon and T-Mobile and the Facebook Fone and Facebook Home. → Read More
Well, that didn’t take long – Facebook Home is already being parodied on YouTube, in a video which actually ends up making a few biting comments about the potential problems the new application will face. For example, will the promised monthly updates to Facebook Home end up confusing users as to the basics of how their phone operates? Where will the ads (you know they’re coming) eventually… → Read More
Making you feel comfortable didn’t get Facebook to a billion users. It had to push your limits of “open and connectedness”. That’s why so many of its product launches are initially met with outrage, or uncertainty. But Zuck is convinced the amount we share will double each year. So if you don’t want Home yet, fine. It’s designed to handle how we share in 2016 so no one steals Facebook’s future. → Read More
Facebook is absolutely, positively, 100 percent not working on a phone.
The first rule of tech news remains intact: when a company says they’re definitely not doing something, it’s as sure a sign as you can get that they will eventually do said thing. → Read More
While Facebook’s press event focused on the “Home” app that runs on unforked Androids, HTC and Facebook have confirmed to me they modified Android to give the HTC First phone features not available in the downloadable Home app. This lets the First pipe in email and calendar notifications to its homescreen. And with the Facebook Home Program, other OEMs can get Facebook’s help fiddling with Android → Read More
The Facebook Home experience is based around next-level gesture control. Here you can watch us swipe, fling, and pop Facebook content in our hands-on demo of the new HTC First handset that comes with Home pre-installed. Compared to Facebook’s flagship suite of native mobile apps, Home on the HTC First is much more responsive. You could even call it (gasp!) fun to use. Watch that in the video… → Read More
Facebook has posted its first official promotional video for Facebook Home to its YouTube account, and unfortunately it isn’t the bizarre video set on an airplane they showed during their presentation earlier today. Instead, it uses the classic method of tugging at your heart strings and playing on your disconnectedness from real-life relationships to suggest how much a device could help with… → Read More
Facebook Home brings a variety of new features to the Android experience, and now you can see those in action in a video series released by launch carrier partner AT&T via their official YouTube channel. The features demoed are the new Cover Feed home screen, Notifications, and Chat Heads, all of which I singled out as key features that could offer a user experience advantage for Android users… → Read More
After Facebook introduced “Home,” its new launcher for Android phones that will help you engage with your friends quickly without having to open the actual app, I asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg if such a product could ever find its way to iOS. Clearly, the reason for “starting with Android,” as Zuckerberg put it at the beginning of the Home event, is because… → Read More
Facebook’s event today was all about a new “Home on Android,” and that’s exactly what Facebook Home delivers. The Android launcher integrates Facebook features into most aspects of the Android smartphone experience, eliminating the need to jump into a dedicated Facebook app in most situations. Here’s a breakdown of what Facebook Home is all about. → Read More
Today at the Facebook phone event, the company unveiled Facebook Home, an Android “app” that will change your phone’s home screen and core features. It will be released in the Play Store on April 12, with an update coming every month. At first, Facebook Home will only work on selected devices, because the company needs to work with hardware partners to make it compatible. The HTC… → Read More
At today’s Facebook “Home on Android” event, the company launched a brand new homescreen that can be installed across any Android device, called Home.
Home transforms your smartphone from a app-centric, task-driven device to a people-centric tool, keeping you in the know about your friends and connections with nary a swipe from you. But one part of the phone that Facebook is dedicated to… → Read More
As predicted, Facebook announced a way to turn your Android phone into one focused on people and not apps, as we’ve grown accustomed to on computers and mobile devices. “We don’t want to build a phone or operating system that only some people could use,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, adding that he wants to do more than build something for 1-2 percent of the smartphone… → Read More
Facebook today announced a new apps called Facebook Home that replaces your standard Android’s homescreen with an immersive Facebook experience featuring full-screen photos, status updates, and notifications. It won’t require a forked Android operating system, as Facebook wants it to be available to a wide audience. Facebook also announced a special version of Home will come pre-installed on the… → Read More
Good morning, Internet! We’re live from Facebook Headquarters in Menlo Park, where the company is expected to finally detail the bordering-on-mythical Facebook Phone. Will it be just one phone? Will it be software to turn many Android phones into the Facebook Phone? We’re here to find out! → Read More
Facebook’s next billion users don’t have smartphones or even the Internet yet, but the Facebook Phone could change that. Through savvy carrier deals, subsidized handsets, and free limited data access, Facebook could ensure emerging markets come online with friend requests as their first experience. That could turn populations of Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America into Facebookers for life. → Read More
With the Facebook “Phone” project due to be announced in a few hours, it’s worth remembering Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has publicly said building a phone is “so clearly the wrong strategy for us.” At TechCrunch’s Disrupt SF conference last September, Michael Arrington grilled Zuckerberg about it. → Read More
Ambient intimacy, accelerated social life, thawed relations between Google and Facebook, and an iPhone that looks impersonal by comparison. These are just a few of the short-term ripple effects of the Facebook “Phone” project to be unveiled April 4th. In this video, I recap leaked intel from my sources and 9To5Google, show photos of the phone itself plus its software, and discuss why you should… → Read More
The HTC hardware that’s being prepped as the delivery mechanism for Facebook Home, which has lots more potential than the device itself, supposedly leaked in the image above. The render, tweeted by Evleaks, a consistent source of pre-release Android hardware info, doesn’t look like much: it’s destined to be a mid-range device, after all, according to early leaks. → Read More
Facebook’s new “Home” on Android will debut on a mediocre HTC handset codenamed “Myst” but will be available on standard Android phones, according to an autopsy of a leaked developer build of the Facebook “phone” software scored by Android Police. This aligns with our scoop and predictions from last week about what Facebook will launch at its big press event on Thursday. → Read More
Question: How do you attract a key youth, mobile-first demographic to your social network and get them to increase engagement? Answer: Partner with an OEM handset manufacturer to create a powerful yet reasonably priced branded device with all your software already on board. Facebook looks to be readying a follow-up to the HTC Status, a mid-market smartphone it released with a dedicated Facebook… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco, CA
Berlin, Germany
