‘Facebook Phone’ is slick, simple
Social network to star on screen
It’s a neat phone if you like having Facebook in your face all the time.
HTC is NEW YORK poised to bring out the lovely HTC One smartphone that I reviewed earlier this week. Yet, many people seem more curious about the midtier HTC First, which hits AT&T stores on Friday.
The reason is that the First is also known as the “Facebook Phone.” It’s the first handset with the social network’s new Facebook Home user interface preloaded. Starting Friday, you’ll also be able to fetch Facebook Home in the Google Play store for compatible devices: the HTC One X; HTC One X+; Samsung Galaxy S III; and Samsung Galaxy Note II.
You won’t mistake the Facebook connection on the HTC First — a capable but not exceptional Android smartphone. The circled Facebook “f ” icon is on the back of the handset, between logos for HTC and AT&T. The “f ” is the first thing you see when you power on. Though you can disable it, the Facebook Home screen is your designated landing spot by default. It’s also the first phone to preload Facebook-owned Instagram.
A few words about the First hardware: It doesn’t pack the punch of its upscale sibling, but runs the latest version of Android called Jelly Bean, and is compatible with AT&T’s 4G LTE network. It will cost $99.99 with a two-year contract and come in four colors. First comes with 16 gigabytes of storage, has the requisite front and rear cameras, and has a modest 4.3inch 720P high-definition display.
What draws you is the Facebook connection, and that’s the bottom line: Do you like Facebook enough to make it the centerpiece of your phone? Facebook has done a nice job with the immersive Home interface, if you can live with having Facebook in your face all the time. On the HTC One, for example, HTC is pushing an interface known as BlinkFeed, and it includes feeds from Facebook. You can also view feeds from Twitter, as well as from other content providers.
On Home, a fresh stream of pic- tures shared by your Facebook friends takes over the entire display — pictures pan slowly, right to left, then left to right, bringing to mind a Ken Burns documentary, and they look beautiful. Every few seconds, a new picture takes over, or you can manually swipe from one to the next. Facebook calls this Cover Feed, and it’s a delightful way to keep up with pals. You won’t see everything, but Facebook says status updates, photos (from Facebook and/or Instagram), and page posts are among the things included at launch. You won’t see offers or videos initially. Among factors that determine what you see: Facebook “likes,” relevance and the size of the photos. If you’re offline, Facebook caches or stores content.
Written posts appear on the face of a picture, and if you appreciate what you see or read, you can double tap the display to “like” it, or tap the small thumbs-up icon on the bottom left corner. You can supply a comment by tapping another icon near the lower left. On the bottom right, you’ll see how many other people commented and/or like a feed.
You can manage the interface by tapping the screen, which brings up your profile picture in a circle. Press the circle and drag it to other circles that appear, and you have options: you can summon Facebook Messenger; summon an Apps Launcher; or summon the last app you were using. The Apps Launcher is dimly transparent; you can see the underlying Facebook photo beneath it.
Notifications appear as part of Facebook Home, such as when a friend posts something on your time line. You can tap the notification to respond. You also get standard phone notifications, such as missed calls or notifications when Wi-Fi networks are available or if e-mails come in.
You don’t have to be on the Home screen to exploit a feature Facebook refers to as “Chat Heads.” When a friend sends you a text message, either a Facebook message or regular SMS text, you see a friend’s mug in a small circle. You can chat right then, no matter what app you’re working in. You can drag the Chat Head around the screen or discard it by dragging it onto an “x” at the bottom.
I didn’t detect a noticeable hit in battery life using Facebook Home, and Facebook, to its credit, is mindful of data use. You can control settings that affect data usage, choosing between High, Medium and Low settings to control how much data Home uses and the quality of photo images (my phone was set to Medium). When you hit a certain threshold, no new photos will download, but you’ll be able to see the photos already cached on your device.
Big questions remain. People are often skittish about privacy. Another thing to watch is how Facebook eventually uses ads to monetize the Home experience. The onus is on Facebook to present ads delicately. If not, I suspect many people will turn Home off.
For now, Facebook has delivered a smooth experience built around pretty pictures and a rather seamless chat experience. But your home screen is a very personal piece of real estate. You have to trust and “like” Facebook a fair amount to welcome Home into your mobile home.