There was a time earlier this year when the term Facebook Phone evicted only a handful of responses. There were specific “Facebook phone” launches this year as well. The “official” Facebook phone – meaning the one backed by Facebook too made its debut in various countries (including India).
I hope you all remember the Vodafone 555 Blue which made its loud debut a few months ago. However, the Vodafone 555 was touted by many to be too low end with it even lacking basic 3G network support. Other contenders for the Facebook phone tag included the HTC ChaCha, HTC Salsa, HTC Status and the INQ Cloud Touch. However, these were not “official” ones that had backing of Facebook and were merely devices that had an UI that was woven around Facebook.
Al this is however set to change if we are to believe a recent report by AllThingsD. According to them, Facebook is working on a new mobile phone that they plan to release some time in the future. The phone is reportedly codenamed Buffy (after Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show). Facebook is said to have held talks with various manufacturers to make the handset before finally homing in on HTC. Samsung too was in the fray.
The phone would run a modified version of Android and would support HTML 5 based application platform that Facebook generously uses these days. The report however also adds that since this is a long term project, it could take as long as 12 to 18 months’ for the final device to appear. That is a long time for something to be under development we believe.
Anyway, we would welcome any handset that can replace the Vodafone Blue as the only true (official) Facebook phone right now – thanks to it being not very well endowed when it comes to sheer number of features.
