Facebook Unveils Home for Android Phones

Mark Zuckerberg unveiled his vision for a Facebook phone with a forthcoming interface designed for Androids called Home. The company partnered with HTC and AT&T to deliver a phone, called HTC First, that will be available April 12 for $99.

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Zuckerberg framed his remarks at the company's Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters Thursday with a simple-sounding idea: "What would it feel like if our phones were designed around people, not apps?"

And he noted upfront, addressing years of rumors, "So, we're not building a phone and we're not building an operating system." Instead, Zuckerberg wanted to design a Facebook interface to included integrated interactions rather than a series of individual apps. 

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"What would it look like if -- instead of our phones being designed around apps first and then just being able to have some interactions with people inside of those apps -- if we flipped that around," he said. "And made it so that our phones were designed around people first and then you could also interact with apps when you wanted to."

Zuckerberg envisioned a home screen of a phone uncluttered by apps and more integrated. Before Facebook introduced News Feed, he said, users primarily interacted with other people by checking friend's individual pages for updates. News Feed created a constant stream of news in a single place. 

A demonstration of Home showed a series of pictures on the home screen of the phone along with status updates and messages integrated into the interface. Facebook debuted a web ad to promote Home, with a narrator selling the download by noting that "you can keep chatting from any app, so no matter what you're doing, your friends are always right there with you." 

The Home app for phones with Android operating systems will be available April 12 from Google's store. Watch the announcement here.