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Facebook Home hits Google Play today, available for select Android devices
Chat heads, a virtual carousel of full screen (Instagram) images and enough status updates to let you keep close stalkerly tabs on your nearest and dearest -- that's what Facebook's got in Home. And as of today, it's breaking free from AT&T's exclusive HTC First and heading to a choice few Android flagships in the US. Now owners of the Samsung Galaxy S III, Galaxy Note II as well as the HTC One X+ can rush on over to Google Play or Facebook's site to download the free screen-stealing app / launcher. And when HTC's One and Samsung's GS 4 make their eventual way to the US market, Facebook heads will also have the privilege of setting up Home on those two flagships, just as Zuck promised. Home: it's where privacy and your free time go to die.
Facebook Messenger for Android updated with chat head support
If you're an absolute Facebook addict, then today is the day you've been waiting for. Home should officially be hitting the Play store at some point today. In preparation for its debut, the company has just updated its Messenger app. The change log features the usual slew of bug fixes but, most importantly, it adds support for chat heads. Those floating IM shortcuts are one of the most anticipated features of Facebook's homescreen replacement, and appear to be as irritating as they are convenient. To get your update, head to the Play store now. Update: The official Facebook app has also been updated, with the permissions necessary to run Home. But, we're not seeing the launcher yet, either buried in the Facebook app's settings or in the Play store. We'll be keeping an eye out, though.
The Daily Roundup for 04.10.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
HTC First with Facebook Home review
With a billion users, it'd be an understatement to say Facebook has done a good job conquering the desktop world. Mobile, however, is the social network's next frontier: although it has a significant presence on every major smartphone and tablet platform, the company has a reputation for bringing its key features to the PC environment long before they arrive on mobile -- if at all. But the April 4th reveal of Facebook Home, a solidly built Android launcher, reflects a change in attitude for Mark Zuckerberg and Co. Instead of simply maintaining a smartphone presence, Facebook is ready to go to battle and is putting mobile on the top of its list of priorities. It's even adding a proper piece of hardware to its arsenal in the form of the HTC First, a 4.3-inch device on AT&T with LTE, reasonable mid-range specs and a gorgeous display. Is it worth $99 with a two-year commitment to purchase a handset dedicated to the social cause? Should you just wait until Home is available as a free download in the Google Play Store? Or is it best to ignore it altogether? Continue reading to find out.%Gallery-185111%
Get an early look at Facebook Home with these leaked pre-release APKs
Facebook Home's making its official debut on the HTC First and a handful of big-hitting Android handsets this Friday, but MoDaCo has come across a trio of APKs which offer an early taste. The leaked APKs have been stripped from a pre-release HTC First ROM, with MoDaCo noting they're "rather buggy" and not fully functional -- Chat Heads doesn't work, for example. You'll need a handset with a max screen res of 1,280 x 768 and must be able to remove the current Android Facebook app, as the newer APKs won't install otherwise. MoDaCo lists a workaround for phones that have Facebook baked into the ROM, but it'll still need to be rooted. Hit up the source link if you've got the side-loading skills and feel like giving Facebook Home a preliminary poking.
The Weekly Roundup for 04.01.2013
You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Mark Zuckerberg loves Apple and his iPhone, but isn't optimistic Facebook Home is iOS bound
Facebook this past Thursday took the wraps off of its highly anticipated Facebook Phone. Calling it a phone, however, is a bit of a misnomer because it's more of a Facebook layer -- dubbed Facebook Home -- that sits atop of Android and effectively drapes the user experience with all things Facebook. For instance, when a user installs Facebook Home (which will be available from the Google Play store), the user's homescreen and lockscreen become home to his/her Facebook newsfeed. Put simply, it's Facebook 24/7. In addition to being available as a download from Google, Facebook announced that it will come pre-installed on various devices as well, including the HTC First. Facebook also partnered up with handset manufacturers like Samsung and Sony to release Facebook Home enabled smartphones in the future. All that said, can we expect to see Facebook Home show up in the iOS App Store anytime soon? Well, given that Apple exerts stringent control over the look and feel of its iPhone user experience, smart money is that the answer to that question is a resounding no. Naturally, Zuckerberg was asked about the prospects of Facebook Home coming to iOS during Thursday's media event. He was rather diplomatic with his response. "We have a great relationship with Apple," Zuckerberg answered. "We have integration into iOS, we've worked with them before. With Apple, everything you want to do goes through them. With Android, it doesn't have to." In a subsequent interview with Wired's Steven Levy, Zuckerberg was asked if he could envision Facebook Home coming to iOS in two years time. While Zuckerberg admits that Facebook has a "pretty good partnership with Apple", he is also keenly aware that Apple is adamant about controlling the entire user experience. That notwithstanding, Zuckerberg answered that he would "love for that answer to be yes" before proceeding to explain that Android's open platform gives them the flexibility they need to create unique user experiences like Facebook Home. "Of course, a lot of people also love iPhones," Zuckerberg added. "I love mine, and I would like to be able to deliver Facebook Home there as well." Bloomberg TV also posted an interview with Jon Erlichman who recalled asking Zuckerberg about how an enhanced Facebook experience sits with rivals and partners like Apple. "We love Apple," Zuckerberg told Erlichman. It's interesting to note that Apple and Facebook, while seemingly on good terms now, have butted heads in the past. You might remember that Steve Jobs a few years ago explained why Apple was never able to secure a deal to integrate Facebook with Ping, Apple's failed attempt at a social network for music. Jobs said that talks with Facebook went nowhere because Facebook wanted "onerous terms that we could not agree to." Nonetheless, Steve Jobs admired Mark Zuckerberg's determination to create a long-standing company and not sell out for a quick payday when such opportunities presented themselves. What's more, Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson once recalled that when he asked Jobs who he admired most in Silicon Valley, Zuckerberg was the person Jobs mentioned. Jobs appreciated Zuckerberg's "intuitive feel" regarding Facebook's direction, his willingness to "cannibalize old things" and, according to Isaacson, "felt an odd kinship with Mark." Zuckerberg expressed a similar sentiment during a November 2011 interview with Charlie Rose. I mean, Apple is a company that is so focused on just building products that -- for their customers and their users. And -- and that's like -- it's such a deep part of their mission is build these beautiful products for their users. And I think we connected a lot on this level of, okay, Facebook has this mission that's really more than just trying to build a company, right, that has a market cap or a value. It's like we're trying to do this thing in the world. And I don't know, a lot of it I just think we connected on that level. And on a somewhat related note, Zuckerberg about a year ago uploaded a photo of his desk to Facebook. Suffice it to say, Facebook's office space seems rather Mac heavy while Zuck appears to be a fan of Apple's MacBook Air. Lastly, if I may jump back to Facebook Home for a second, Zuckerberg indicated that Facebook Home will eventually display advertisements. I wonder how users, not to mention Google, will feel about that.
Facebook responds to Home privacy concerns, specifies what it will and won't know
Some of the discussion about Facebook Home since its debut yesterday has related to concerns that it gives the social network too much access to user's information, and now Facebook has responded. Its blog post specifies that Home is subject to the same controls as everything else in a user's Facebook account. It states that Facebook will not track user's location any differently than the existing app, and while it could see what apps are launched, it can't observe what actions are taken within them beyond the already existing Facebook API hooks. As far as information that is collected, it will have a list of apps that are in the Home launcher, and tracks data including which apps are responsible for notification, which is kept identifiable for up to 90 days.
Editorial: The imperialism of Facebook Home
Business battles are often ecosystem battles, in which brands develop a matrix of conveniently connected products and services, in an attempt to lock customers into a dependency. Offline companies follow this tack (think razors and blades). But the internet, with its many connection nodes, crossovers to tangential realms and parallel on-ramps is where ecosystem wars are most elaborately waged. Only rarely do market conditions cultivate a broader ambition in which a company has a chance to step beyond mere ecosystem competition to a higher level of sovereignty. Facebook's imminent release of Home represents a stab at that rare imperialism.
The After Math: Facebook finds a new Home, robot hands get cheaper and the Bluths are back
Welcome to The After Math, where we attempt to summarize this week's tech news through numbers, decimal places and percentages It's finally Friday, and while the week kicked off with one too many April 1st efforts, the big news for TAM this week is a release date for the Netflix-exclusive fourth season of Arrested Development. Nothing else should matter, but if you think it does, Facebook finally showed off their new game plan for mobile and HTC appeared from the sidelines with a new phone to house it. According to some, Windows Phone has also started to claim a less embarrassing share of the smartphone market too. We crunch and spit out the numbers after the break.
Editor's Letter: The social smartphone
In each issue of Distro, editor-in-chief Tim Stevens publishes a wrap-up of the week in news. There's a good chance 2011's HTC Status, with its portrait QWERTY layout and dedicated Facebook button, never found its way into your social network. That last attempt at the mythical Facebook phone failed to garner much praise, but if social networks gave up so easily, well, we'd all still be using MySpace. HTC and Facebook are at it again, this week launching the $99 First, exclusively on AT&T in the US. Yes, it's a name every commenter could love (or hate). Yes, it's a name every commenter could love (or hate), a title cheekily reminiscent of the HTC One. This, though, is a rather different device, aiming more toward the mid-range and relying on some serious social integration to make it stand out. It's the first phone running the Facebook Home interface, which will be available on many devices starting on April 12th. It delivers a far more comprehensive Facebook experience than the previous apps have managed, and intriguingly Zuckerberg himself said that Home is "the next version of Facebook." The end of the web? Stay tuned.
The Daily Roundup for 04.04.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
The Engadget Interview: HTC President of Global Sales Jason MacKenzie
Shortly after Facebook's big reveal this morning, we caught up with HTC President of Global Sales Jason McKenzie and spent a few minutes with him discussing the First. As expected, he was pretty excited about this collaboration between his company, Facebook and AT&T. Jason revealed to us that HTC's strategy involves ultimately catering the First to hardcore (or at least frequent) users of the social network, whereas a device like the One will be more appealing to those who aren't interested in staying constantly connected. Interestingly, HTC seems to have put Facebook in the driver's seat here, as the First will not only come pre-loaded with Facebook Home (and its firmware optimizations), but no sign of Sense anywhere. It's certainly a departure from HTC's usual branding efforts, so it'll be intriguing to see exactly how well the device sells on AT&T. We have our full interview with Jason below, so take a few minutes to get the First scoop.
Facebook Home hands-on (video)
We've taken a closer look at the HTC First hardware, so let's dig into the firmware side -- namely, the Facebook Home user interface featured on the First. As we heard prior to the event, Home is essentially a skinned version of Android OS that unsurprisingly offers a deeper amount of integration with the social network. As the name of the phone implies, this isn't going to be the same one-and-done deal that we've seen on other devices bearing the unofficial title of "Facebook Phone"; Home is likely here for the foreseeable future, so we'll go more in-depth on the UI and our first impressions.
Facebook Home reaching tablets in coming months
Facebook wants to put Facebook Home on as many devices as possible, and that includes tablets -- eventually. It just promised that tablets would get support, but only at some point in the months ahead. For now, it's phones only. The social network hasn't said which tablets might be at the forefront, although its plan to steadily widen hardware compatibility suggests that any support will evolve quickly.
Facebook Home official, replaces your app icons with social info (video)
Today Facebook finally took the wraps off Home, a suite of apps and a home screen replacement for Android phones. It's not just a new UI for launching apps however; it replaces the lockscreen with Cover Feed and prioritizes updates from people instead of apps. There is a standard paginated launcher, that is always just a swipe away. But the focus is on the full-screen images that are your new welcome screen. These are status updates from friends that you can easily flip through and double tap to like when someone posts something exciting. Plain text status updates are placed over a user's cover photo, to keep the appearance consistent with photo-centric posts. Notifications are presented as small cards, which Facebook applies an algorithm to, in order determine the updates that are most important to you. Just like with the standard Android UI you simply swipe notifications off screen to dismiss them. But, if you want to remove all of them in one shot, you long press a single notification and the rest will be drawn to it and you'll be able to dismiss the entire stack.
Facebook Home to hit select phones on April 12th in the US
Facebook hasn't made Home official just yet, but we can tell you one thing for certain -- it'll be arriving on April 12th in the US. It won't be available on all Android devices that day, broader availability should be coming in the future. On day one it will show up as a download for select devices, which will include the rumored HTC First that we anticipate will make its grand debut shortly. As expected there will be no "Facebook Phone" or even a Facebook OS. Home is an app that will "transform your Android phone into a great social phone" according to the company. The roll out is starting with "just a few phones," (the Galaxy S III, S 4, the HTC One, One X+ and the Note II) but those lucky device owners will be able to enjoy Facebook's mobile vision starting next week. Update: Zuckerberg and Co. also confirmed that Home for tablets is coming too, but it won't arrive until later this year.
Facebook Home UI pictured in more leaked images ahead of tomorrow's event
We've already seen leaked images of the HTC First smartphone purported to be launching at tomorrow's Facebook event, as well as what appears to be its APK, and we now have our best look yet at the Facebook-infused UI you can expect on the device. As you can see above in the image from @evleaks (and others at the source link below), the apparent Facebook Home hub doesn't exactly scream Facebook, although there unsurprisingly appears to be deep Facebook integration throughout. There are only a handful of images though, so there's still a fair bit that remains unknown. We'd say to check back tomorrow for more, but at the rate these leaks have been turning up we may well get yet another look at what's in store before then.
Facebook phone dev-edition APK reveals details about HTC Myst, new Facebook Home features
Facebook already told us all that it'd be announcing something new and Android-related at an event on April 4th. Android Police has just given us a new heaping helping of evidence, via an APK teardown, that the social network will, at long last, announce an oft-rumored, never revealed Facebook phone and a FB-themed version of Google's mobile OS. The ROM reveals that it's built for an AT&T-compatible HTC Myst handset with a 4.3 inch display, 1GB of RAM and a dual-core MSM8960 SoC. There's also a 5-megapixel rear camera, 1.6-megapixel front shooter, Bluetooth 4.0 and WiFi a/b/g/n radios, which confirms earlier spec leaks about the phone. As for software, it runs Android 4.1.2 and Sense 4.5, and most importantly, a new Facebook program called Facebook Home. As you might expect, it'll serve as the phone's home screen and launcher. To that end, it has more system controls than the existing Facebook app, with permission to turn off the lock screen, start up when the phone boots and control your WiFi connection, among others. The APK also revealed that there's a host of circular Facebook-flavored icons and tight Facebook Messenger integration. Oh, and in case you aren't looking to buy FB-specific hardware, fear not, for the presence of TouchWiz compatibility indicates that Facebook Home will be available for other phones as well.
