Facebook Home Reviews Arrive

Last week Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook Home, a bit of software that aims to transform a smartphone's homescreen into a Facebook feed. Now, its release date has arrived, as has the earliest device to house Home: the HTC First. Reviews for phone and software have begun to appear, too. The Verge calls the device itself "a mid-range phone, through-and-through." Its hardware is capable but not impressive, and it's slow enough to be noticed, but not to annoy. What interested them the most was that by turning off Facebook Home, you get an operating system that's very close to an unpolluted, stock Android 4.1.2. Ars generally agrees, pointing out its solid feel, the trade-off of a less-readable but more-holdable 4.3" screen compared to the trend toward 4.8" displays, and an awkwardly placed micro-USB port. As for the Facebook Home Software: "Home takes status updates out of the Facebook app and slaps them right on your homescreen. Instead of little boxes scrolling vertically, however, each update from your News Feed becomes a full-screen photo with small bits of text at the top," says the Verge, adding that having Facebook updates located between you and whatever you picked up your phone to do can be awfully distracting. Ars says, "What we've seen is an application focused solely on making the Facebook experience the hub for all of your social correspondence, but that can be extremely limiting for those who use a number of other social networks." Both publications praise 'Chat Heads,' Facebook's way of surfacing messages without having to dig through a messaging app.

All I can say is

[P-niiice]

ugh....no thanks.

Re:All I can say is

[aaaaaaargh!]

Let me add to this: No, thanks. I already have *email* and *telephone*, which provide enough of a "social hub".

Look beyond Home

[Chance Phelps]

Decent SoC, enough RAM for most, 720p display (only 4.3" across!) and the fact that Home can be ripped off to reveal a perfectly functioning stock Jelly Bean: isn't this the ideal mid-range device? If you're not the kind who upgrades from a Samsung GS3 to a GS4 because of the "OMG four extra cores!!!", this phone + a tablet (iPad/Google Nexus) should keep you happy.

4th place behind Huawei

[Anonymous Coward]

"Except Nokia is doing better than most Android manufacturers"

They're still selling lots of feature phones, but the smartphones business is dying, Huawei took 3rd place in Smartphones (behind Samsung and Apple). Huawei FFS! They were *nowhere* a few years ago! Now they've overtaken Nokia, all in the space of a few years under Elop.

http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2335616

"Huawei Reached No. 3 Spot in Worldwide Smartphone Sales Ranking"
"In the fourth quarter of 2012, Apple and Samsung together raised their worldwide smartphone market share to 52 percent from 46.4 percent in the third quarter of 2012. Samsung ended the year in the No. 1 position, in both worldwide smartphone sales and overall mobile phone sales. "

"and WP8 already has this level of Facebook integration... and integration with other social networks."
IMHO, at some point reality has to set in, they've falled from 1st to 2nd to 3rd to 4th slot in the Smartphone market, Elop has been reduced to chasing discount featurephones because their WP strategy has been such a disaster. You can say it has great FB integration, and I'm sure they're marketing as such, but the sales aren't there and they keep falling further behind the Android crowd. Get a grip Nokia!

Disagree

[O('_')O_Bush]

With UI, slow enough to be noticed is annoying...