Saying that a phone should be designed around "people first," Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg formally announced a new Facebook-centric smartphone experience called "Facebook Home" at a press event in San Francisco Thursday. Zuckerberg also announced a new handset from HTC named the HTC First.
The phone experience centers on the lock screen, which Zuckerberg said is the same as the home screen. The lock screen experience is named “cover feed” and can be navigated via swipes and taps. Swiping up from the cover feed produces an app launcher that allows users to access the rest of their apps.
Cover feed also allows users to browse photos, double-tap to like something, or leave a comment without ever unlocking the phone. Zuckerberg said that the interface is designed around "people, not apps." The interface bears many similarities to the stock Android UI.
In addition to the lock screen experience, Facebook Home includes a feature called "chat heads," a messaging interface that uses chat partners' faces as tabs for their messaging windows. When a user is in any app, a “chat head” can appear off to the side of the screen. Users can tap the icon to enter the conversation and then swipe upward to take the messaging interface off the screen and return to the app they were in before. Both SMS and Facebook messages can use the "chat head" alert.
Facebook Home can be downloaded from the Google Play store starting April 12. When it's first launched, Facebook cautions that Android makes certain the user "really" wants to use it as the default interface, and the user can try it before committing to it as the default. Tablets will not be a party to the initial launch, but Facebook says the interface will come to that form factor "months later."
Initially, only four smartphones will support Facebook Home: the HTC One, HTC One X/X+, Samsung Galaxy S III, Samsung Galaxy S 4, and Samsung Galaxy Note II. Facebook stated explicitly that it is not forking Android or creating a Facebook operating system.
In addition to Facebook's new app suite, it is also launching a new phone named the HTC First that comes with the Facebook Home experience pre-installed. The phone will come in four colors (black, white, sky blue, and red), it is priced at $99.99 with a two-year contract, and its only carrier partner will be AT&T. Pre-orders for the phone open today, and like Facebook Home, it will ship April 12.
During the Q&A following the event, Facebook stated that only Android phones running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich or higher will support the Facebook home suite of apps. Initially, the experience will not include ads, but Zuckerberg said that advertising will eventually be present, particularly in the cover feed.
The Facebook Home experience will also have some granularity in the settings, where users can turn features like chat heads or the cover feed lock screen on and off. Facebook did not indicate any intent to bring similar functionality to either the iOS or Windows Phone platforms.
A Facebook phone has been worked over by the rumor mill since 2010, and its existence had been denied by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg until now. Screenshots and mockups of an OS and phone body design leaked Wednesday.
Facebook’s press event is currently in progress, and Ars reporters are on the ground liveblogging it minute by minute. We will update this article as more details become available.
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