Less than 24 hours ago, a potentially massive announcement was made by the Founder and CEO of Facebook. The announcement consisted of an upcoming release of a new product to be launched by the social network giant, known as Facebook Home. Back in July 2012, Unixmen reported of the hype surrounding rumors of Facebook releasing their own branded smartphone. While Facebook is not releasing their own smartphone as such, the new Facebook Home will transform an Android based smartphone in to something very different.
How does it work?
In a nutshell, Facebook Home moves the Facebook experience away from the contained App service and brings Facebook activity to the Android users Home screen. Essentially replacing the default Android Home screen. Facebook Home will display activity, photos, status updates, messages and notifications all within the Home screen of the smartphone.
Facebook has also announced that HTC will be releasing the HTC First which will have the new Facebook Home pre-installed. No doubt, this will be the first of many smartphones to come with the service pre-installed in to the device. It’s also important to note that Facebook Home is not an operating system of any sorts and does not replace Android as the devices operating system. It’s really a shell overlay that runs on top of the underlying Android base. And all your regular Android Apps are all still installed and available with just one swipe of Facebook Home.
Facebook is promising monthly updates to the service and has announced that a version of Facebook Home will be available for tablet devices within just a couple of months. Insiders of the technology are already claiming the Facebook experience on the tablet is revolutionary.
Facebook Home launches in just one week time on April 12, initially for the US. With other regions to follow.
In addition to Facebook Home, the company is also releasing Facebook Home Program, which will allow smartphone manufacturers to customize the experience for their devices. And it has already signed up a host of partners to get things rolling, including HTC, AT&T, Samsung, Huawei, Sony, Lenovo, Orange, Qualcomm, EE, ZTE and Alcatel.
