Facebook Home is centred on deeply integrating the social network into the home screen. "The home screen is the soul of your phone and we think that it should be deeply personal," said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the launch of Home.
While the focus is mainly on Facebook interaction, it's just as easy to access other apps. "The Facebook home allows users to easily navigate between apps while still being able to chat to friend or respond to request," he added.
Despite speculation and reports of Facebook entering the mobile market by launching a phone picking up in past weeks, it has not launched a phone, operating system or app, but rather its own modified version of Android. "The great thing about android is that it is so open. You can improve almost any part of the operating system. You don't need to modify the operating system," said Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg reiterated the importance of centering the mobile experience around people and not apps. "We have our phones with us all the time. Why do we need to go into all those apps to see what is going on. Phones designed around apps and not people and we want to flip that around. That is what we did with Facebook Home."
Some of the speculation has not been completely misguided, as HTC did announce the launch of its HTC First that would be sold with Facebook Home as standard, but not the Facebook phone as previously thought.
Home features
Facebook has designed the Home Android version to allow a deeper mobile social experience and there are three defining features that help to achieve this. First is the Cover Feed that takes the home screen and turns it into a slide show of what your Facebook friends have posted.
When someone has posted a status update, their cover pictures will be shown behind it. Facebook Home also makes it easy to comment, like or share posts with just one touch.
Another defining feature is the App Launcher that allows the user to access apps from wherever they are on the phone with just a swipe of the finger. There is also a screen that displays all of the apps and users are able to drag any app to the app launcher.
The Chat Heads feature allows users to keep on chatting to their friends even while using other apps or reading something online. The message appears with the face of the Facebook friend so you know who you are chatting to.
The heads of friends can be moved around or swiped away to respond to at a later stage. It also has a message count so you can see how many unread messages you have. SMSes will also appear on Chat Heads.
Home will be released on the 12 April and works on the HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung Galaxy S III and Samsung Galaxy Note II. Home will also work on the forthcoming HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4, and on more devices in the coming months.
Facebook Home will only be launched for tablets within the next few months and the system would be updated monthly with more features.
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