New Delhi: After Facebook invited journalists to the unveiling of what it calls its "new home on Android", rumours started surfacing as to what the social networking giant is going to come up with on April 4.
If rumours are to be believed, Facebook will launch a modified version of Android on Thursday, which embeds Facebook deeply into the operating system, on a phone made by HTC Corp.
Rumours and leaks suggest that "the company will reveal an alternative Android launcher, replacing the homescreen and other core phone functionality with Facebook features," reports The verge.
The new smartphone is expected to be a mid-range handset. Reports claim that Facebook will launch a custom Android OS on the HTC handset codenamed "Myst". Other leaks suggest that the smartphone will be officially be called "HTC First". The phone is rumoured to have a 4.3-inch display, 16GB of storage, a 5-megapixel camera and 1GB RAM. The custom software will also be capable of running on other Android devices, including those from Samsung, HTC, and Google.
It seems plausible that the rumoured smartphone may have a particular portion of smartphone's homescreen devoted to information from the user's Facebook account.
Speculations are rife that the company may directly integrate major features like camera, Facebook Messenger, with Facebook. Facebook may try to feature Facebook more prominently on the smartphone, thereby engaging users even more.
Facebook isn't providing further details. There has been speculation about a "Facebook phone" for a few years. Facebook has long said it would not make its own phone. Rather, such a phone would likely integrate Facebook deeper into the phone's software.
A Facebook rival, Google, makes the Android software that Facebook and HTC would be using under that scenario. Google makes the software available on an open-source basis, meaning others including rivals are free to adapt it for their needs. Amazon.com Inc. does just that in modifying Android to run its Kindle tablet computers.
More than half of Facebook's 1.06 billion monthly users access it on a mobile device. A deeper integration would help Facebook with its mobile aspirations.
Comments
0 comment