ATD says “the phone is planned to run on a modified version of Android that Facebook has tweaked heavily to deeply integrate its services”. Now, if that means a Kindle Fire take on Android — basically making it unrecognisable — that could be a great thing. But if it means stuffing Android with lots of Facebook links, it could be a race car wreck.
But here’s a more urgent point — do we need this? Don’t we already have this? “Facebook has worked to take things a step further,” AllThingsD alleges, “allowing users to upload photos directly from the picture-taking app, or to integrate Facebook contacts with the phone’s address book.” You mean like Windows Phone 7 does? You mean like WebOS did from day one? What hole is Zuckerberg trying to fill here? And do we really trust Facebook, whose IM client has been out for years, is still buggy, and Timeline is months overdue. Facebook does lots of things excellently — they’re ubiquitous for a reason — but clean software I’d want on my phone daily doesn’t seem like one of them. [AllThingsD]
DarthDVD
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 10:06 AMNow they can share your private voice comunications with the world.
MDolley
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 10:12 AMI don’t see why Facebook would make a phone, they make their money because of the volume of users they have. If I was Zuckerberg I’d want every platform to have really good Facebook features.
Mitch Bus
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 5:35 PMThey probably said that about Google, yet here we are..
John
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 10:26 AMGood give it to all the facebook loonies so they can bury their head in their phones all day and stay away from me. Facebook is a cancer and I hope it dies
cayal
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 12:33 PMOh, you’re one of *those* people.
Sicarius123
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 10:31 AMWhy on earth would they make an android based facebook phone when google are trying to replace facebook with google+?
All facebook need to do is make the inbuilt facebook app on windows phone an “official” facebook app so users can’t block being shown in it, and put their logo on a windows phone.
cayal
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 12:33 PMBecause, like most smart companies, they don’t put all their eggs in one basket.
cayal
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 1:17 PMInstead they eat them up. yummy yummy yummy.
amy
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 1:47 PMIsnt Windows Phone 7′s facebook integration good enough?
Steve
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 4:03 PMI wonder how many people out there are using their IOS/Android/WP7 phones out there with Facebook and think “gee, this doesn’t cut it! I want MORE facebook!”
This sounds stupid. The death of WebOS, and the stunted growth of WP7 have shown that there’s only so much room for smartphone platforms out there, we don’t need a separate ‘facebook’ layer. A few years from now, it’ll even out at 3, maybe 4 players: IOS, Android and WP7/RIM fighting for bronze.