The story's out that Facebook is to announce a Facebook phone this coming week. The big question of course will be, well, does anyone actually want a Facebook phone? HTC's Status may not have been a tremendous hit, but it looks like Facebook hasn't severed its ties with the smartphone maker just yet. According to TechCrunch and New York Times sources, April 4th's "Come See Our New Home on Android" event is set to feature an HTC smartphone with a custom, Facebook-centric OS. It's perhaps the next best thing to a phone designed and manufactured by Facebook, but instead, HTC will be tasked with creating the hardware. There's a little more to it than just the hardware: Foxconn could have been tapped to supply that. It's the software layer that Foxconn or other assemblers couldn't have provided. What such a phone might mean? Constant, close contact with your friends. That's the promise of a "Facebook phone." The modified Android OS and mobile homescreen replacement that sources tell us Facebook will unveil April 4th pushes your social life to you so fetching it isn't interruptive. The news feed brought us ambient intimacy, but Facebook's homescreen could turn that social graph awareness into a sixth sense. A "sixth sense" might be taking things a little too far but certainly, a phone with Facebook as the opening screen would make the social media more discernible.
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