Facebook’s big announcement, the Facebook phone?

This is probably one of the rumors that won’t just die. Ever since the HTC ChaCha and Salsa, there has been a long line of speculations about when the next Facebook phone will be out – and little by little, the puzzle pieces are forming the big picture as inch closer to the official announcement.

Facebook has already sent an invite for an event this April 4 (Pacific Time), with the words “Come see our new home on Android.” 

In our opinion, the announcement will most likely be a software rather than a handset – which is probably a launcher app for Android, or an Android phone running a Facebook UI. HTC has been long speculated to be the manufacturer of the said device, which is entirely plausible when you look at their past with Facebook and their dedication to a social-networking UI (Sense).

“A Facebook phone just doesn’t make any sense.”

-Mark Zuckerberg

The man behind Facebook has stated it last year that a handset doesn’t make any sense, but he explained that he wanted deep integration with mobile devices – which is why we’re really looking at software here, instead of a phone.

Unwired View gathered some of the patents that has been filed to give a glimpse of what we could be looking at soon, and it screams “Facebook Phone!” all around. We might be looking at a Facebook Feed on the lockscreen, a Facebook-integrated phonebook/dialer and a modified camera app.

EVleaks tweeted an image of what is reported to be the HTC First, with no HTC branding on the phone itself. Sites have reported this to be the Facebook phone along with its rumored specs. We are a bit skeptical about the said leak as it seems like the HTC First moniker was just placed on top of the image.

The hardware side of things is still hard to grasp for us at present. The push forward that Facebook is probably aiming at is for you to be more integrated with Facebook – that you’re going to base your contacts on your friends list, your apps on Facebook apps, and your email on [email protected].

A better Facebook app would be nice, since it’s still occasionally slow on loading stuff. Do you want a new Facebook launcher for your Android phone? Or rather, a reasonably priced Facebook phone? We’re going to find out soon, so stay tuned.

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