UPDATE: Right as we hit the publish button for this story, Facebook has spoken up, denying all the news about the rumored Facebook Phone. Dan Rose, head of business development stated: “This is really just another example of a manufacturer who has taken our public APIs (application programming interfaces) and integrated them into their device in an interesting way. The rumours around there being something more to this HTC device are overblown.” While this certainly puts to bed any rumors about an official Facebook branded phone, the statement does imply that HTC may be doing some interesting work with Facebook’s APIs and may have some significant enhancements to HTC Sense in the near future.
As many of you may already know, rumors about a Facebook phone have been going around for some time. For the longest time we were glad that we could simply stand out the outside without getting involved in all the news that was circulating. But now, new details put HTC right in the center of the ring. 
According to London’s City A.M. newspaper (the same one that blew the Nexus One story wide open), one of their sources has confirmed that the Facebook is working on two handsets and is partnering with HTC to manufacture the devices. The first device will be a touch-only slate handset while the second will feature a physical QWERTY keyboard. The two handsets will be running a heavily modified version of Android which will incorporate all of Facebook’s communications services.
A second story has also surfaced which claims that a focus group was held in regards to an upcoming device. Members of the focus group were asked many questions which included “How many photos do you upload to Facebook a day” and many others which referenced Facebook.
List of possible Facebok Phone features:
- Location aware coupons: you pick main categories of interest. When you’re near any stores that fall into those categories, coupons are automatically pushed to your phone. Basically, it sounds like “Facebook Deals on steroids,” as our tipster elegantly phrased it.
- An always-on GPS service much like Google Latitude that would run in the background. The service would provide automatic “check-ins” and might share your location with friends.
- No local storage (or very little). Everything is cloud-based, including contacts, media, data, etc.
- Obviously the phone will include a camera, but everything will be uploaded automatically and stored in the cloud.
- A news ticker-style message notification system: all messages funnel into one mass inbox, sortable by type, but initially unfiltered. There will also be a ticker of some kind that reads off message content as it’s delivered, regardless of message type.
While we’re not against the idea of a Facebook Phone, we’re not entirely convinced that the device(s) will ever get made. Facebook may be taking over the internet, but they still have a few growing pains to sort out before they step out with an entirely new hardware driven marketplace. That being said; if Facebook does eventually come out with tier own phones, HTC is certainly the best OEM for the job.
Rumor has it that Facebook may unveil the new devices at next month’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Only two more weeks and we should know if this story is fact of fiction.
