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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.
Saves me tons of clicks to see meemaw's and peepaw's cat pictures and I don't have to click to notice that one of my Chinese 'friends' is on the crapper again.
I cannot think of anyone who is so dominated by Facebook that they would want it on their home screen. My experience is that text messaging is the dominant use and that does not need a Facebook account.
ugh....no thanks.
Because they're paying for it?
Of course, in facebook's eyes, there's a simple solution for that: don't use the other social networks.
IF they decide to do away with the regular facebook app, imagine how many people would basically be turning their phone into a 'facebook phone' (because they've 'got to' have facebook, and the mobile site is laughable even without the "but it's not an app :("-factor), at the expense of other social networks.. such as Google+.. and that on what is largely considered to be Google's platform.
facebook chat is already chewing away at WhatsApp... now all facebook needs is forced short messages in a(n optionally) separate stream and who even needs twitter anymore?
and im certian theres no gps tracking with 'locally owned businesses' injecting ads as you walk by right?
I hate to break this to you, but if FB charged everyone for their service they would still sell your information to anyone and everyone because more money is more money.
Right now they'd face a huge backlash from the FB faithful if they started to charge for basic service (they already want $$$ to get your posts to all your friends, or to let you send messages to Señor Zuckerberg or celebrities). Losing a major chunk of their "product" would adversely affect their revenue stream enough to derail them. Had they started charging a low fee (say, $10 a year) early in their history then most FB users wouldn't think twice about it (though they would have significantly less users).
The words "Facebook" and "trustworthy" can never be used together in a positive way (except for "I'm positive Facebook isn't trustworthy").
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.
"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!
If the primary purpose of your "device" is NOT to make phone calls, then... it's something else. It's a handheld digital multipurpose device with cellular capability.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
With UI, slow enough to be noticed is annoying...
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Facebook = New AOL.
CDs are in the mail.
OMG somebody should do this for other sites, too! It's so obvious, now that I've heard of it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I'm glad my phone can finally be the social device it deserves to be!
"Except Nokia is doing better than most Android manufacturers"
By what metric? I'm not sure with a $4bn+ loss last year that they're really doing better than anyone, few companies in few industries can claim that kind of massive loss, they really have entered "Most failed company in the world" territory.
About the only metric by which they can determine "success" is total phone shipments, but seeing as the vast majority of those are feature phones or dumb phones to places like Africa that have insanely low margins as to be unprofitable I'm not sure what value that metric serves.
Even HTC and Blackberry which are often deemed to be struggling made roughly $1.2bn profit each last year.
So no, it wouldn't be a bad move for Nokia, the current status quo for them is disastrous and given that they made such a brutal loss last year. They turned a profit in the final quarter, but nearly all of that came from their networking equipment arm (selling deep packet inspection equipment to oppressive regimes mostly). Their current strategy is a complete failure of mind blowing proportions, there have been few tech failures in history as disastrous to a company as the current path they're pursuing.
Had they instead used their talent in hardware design to build Android handsets, it'd almost certainly be the case that right now they'd be sat up their alongside Apple and Samsung, not down the bottom way beneath Samsung, Apple, Sony, Blackberry, ZTE, Huawei, HTC, Motorola, and pretty much anyone else in the mobile phone market. People say companies like Nokia can't differentiate themselves in the Android market - obviously that's bollocks given that that's exactly what Samsung did. Nokia could have too, it still could if it wasn't just a defacto branch of Microsoft thanks to Elop.