Thanks in part to the multitude of mobile apps available across every smartphone platform, consumers seem to be uninterested in the own-brand handset Facebook is reportedly developing — security concerns may be an issue as well, of course. According to a recent report, Facebook is working with HTC on a new smartphone code-named “Buffy” that will feature a customized version of the Android operating system with deep Facebook integration. The Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD blog recently conducted a survey to assess interest in the Facebook-branded smartphone, and the results are telling. As of Monday morning, more than 81% of respondents want nothing to do with a Facebook phone. Approximately 11% said they might consider the handset depending on features and security, and less than 8% said they would want to buy the handset. Facebook has been rumored to be working on an own-brand smartphone for more than a year, but the company has repeatedly denied the claims.

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Last year, there were plenty of rumors that Facebook was working on building a phone of its own. Ultimately, a pair of humdrum devices with a simple “Facebook button” ended up hitting the market, and the rumors stopped… until now. On Monday, AllThingsD said it has learned that Facebook is working closely with HTC on a new phone currently codenamed “Buffy.” The device will supposedly run a modified version of Android that, obviously, will put Facebook’s services smack in the faces of its users. The two companies are also working to add support so that developers can write HTML5 apps for the phone. “Our mobile strategy is simple: We think every mobile device is better if it is deeply social,” a Facebook spokesperson told AllThingsD, declining to comment specifically on the secret phone. ”We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers to bring powerful social experiences to more people around the world.” Facebook has repeatedly denied any interest in creating an own-brand device and the spokesperson’s quote is on a par with what the company has said in the past. 

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Motorola on Friday quietly published images and details to its website surrounding the MOTOKEY SOCIAL, a feature phone with a strong focus on Facebook. Like HTC’s Chacha and Salsa, this upcoming Motorola phone features a dedicated Facebook button that simplifies the process of sharing images and status updates on the popular social network. The MOTOKEY SOCIAL also features a full QWERTY keyboard, a 2.4-inch QVGA display, a 3-megapixel camera, email, Web access and a 910 mAh battery rated for 480 minutes of talk time. Pricing and launch details have not yet been announced.

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As Hewlett-Packard reportedly toys with the idea of selling off its webOS software division, a new possible suitor may emerge from the dust following the burial of HP’s failed webOS devices. In a note to investors on Thursday, Jefferies & Company analyst Peter Misek suggests that Facebook might be in the best position to purchase webOS and use it to expand its lead in the social space. “Based on our analysis of prospective buyers and our checks, we believe Facebook is the best fit,” the analyst wrote according to Tech Trader Daily. Read on for more.

Misek continued, “Due to Facebook’s scale, developer community, and movement toward media (e.g., music) and communications (Messenger), it is possible that an acquisition of an OS asset like this could be a good option. Checks with developers indicate that they would support a potential Facebook OS, and industry sources have noted Facebook’s historic interest in a mobile OS or heavily influencing one.”

As to which companies might be in trouble if Facebook enters the platform wars, Misek points to two popular victims. “We see this scenario as most negative to Research in Motion and Windows 8 as there would be another major competitor vying to be the third mobile OS,” the analyst noted.

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The Motorola EX225 has been revealed by the Bluetooth SIG and images of the phone show a dedicated Facebook button. The EX225 looks nearly identical to the HTC Status and, like that phone, is expected to offer a fully Facebook-integrated user interface, a 2.4-inch touchscreen display and a full QWERTY keyboard. In August, a report suggested that AT&T was going to discontinue the Status after the phone failed to attract a substantial customer base but AT&T immediately dispel the rumor, stating “The HTC Status is a great product and our plans for it to be part of our portfolio haven’t changed.” Now, it looks like other companies will try to follow HTC’s lead. A second image of the EX225 suggests Motorola also has plans for a version of the phone without a Facebook button, and that version could launch as a dual-SIM device. The second image follows below.

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AT&T is reportedly considering pulling the HTC Status Facebook phone from its smartphone lineup due to slower than expected sales. The rumor comes by way of TechCrunch, which reports that it has confirmed the Status’ lackluster sales with multiple sources. AT&T is said to be preparing to discontinue the phone after just over a month on the market. AT&T’s HTC Status is an Android-powered QWERTY smartphone with a dedicated Facebook button that simplifies the process of sharing content on the world’s most popular social network. With the wide availability of native Facebook applications on iOS, Android and other popular platforms, however, consumers are seemingly content with other options and aren’t willing to sacrifice screen size for a Facebook button.

UPDATE: An AT&T spokesperson sent BGR the following statement via email: “The HTC Status is a great product and our plans for it to be part of our portfolio haven’t changed.”

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AT&T on Monday announced pre-order availability of its first “Facebook Phone,” the HTC Status. Social butterflies on the nation’s No. 2 wireless carrier can pre-order the sleek smartphone for $49.99 on contract beginning immediately, and the phone will arrive in stores this Sunday, July 17th. Aimed squarely at young Facebook fanatics, the HTC Status features Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread, a QWERTY keypad, a 5-megapixel camera and a dedicated Facebook sharing button. “We can’t wait to put the HTC Status in the hands of our young customers who will waste no time tapping into Facebook to update their friends,” said AT&T Senior VP of Devices, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets Jeff Bradley in a statement.  “We’re also really pleased to offer the hottest new smartphone at an affordable price to this important, socially savvy youth market.” Also of note, Best Buy will be the exclusive purveyor of the HTC Status in a special limited edition mauve color when the phone launches next week. AT&T’s full press release follows below.

HTC Status Offers One-Touch Facebook Sharing For Just $49.99

First Mobile Phone with Dedicated Facebook Share Button Available for Preorder on ATT.com Arrives in AT&T Stores on July 17

Dallas, Texas, July 11, 2011

Key Facts

• AT&T begins presales of the HTC Status today on http://www.att.com/.
• The first phone with a dedicated Facebook share button, the HTC Status is exclusive to AT&T customers for $49.99 with a two-year contract.
• Best Buy stores to offer exclusive color.
• HTC Status available in time for back-to-school shopping season.

HTC Status

The ultimate phone for customers who love posting on Facebook what they’re doing, seeing or listening to, the HTC Status is the first phone to feature a dedicated Facebook share button.  Not just a link to a mobile Facebook application, the button lets you quickly share what you are doing on Facebook with a simple press.  It is also context aware and lights up when there is an activity to share, such as a song you are listening to, a website you are viewing or a photo you have taken.

The Facebook share button allows people to:

• Post instantly on your wall or a friend’s wall by pressing the Facebook share button from your home screen.
• Take a picture or shoot a video and share it instantly with a press of the Facebook share button. You can also post multiple pictures at one time and label and tag them before posting.  Or even post photos automatically as you’re taking them.
• Check in to Facebook Places by pressing and holding the Facebook share button from the home screen.
• Share something cool on the Web with a quick press of the Facebook share button and be the first with the news.
• Let your friends in on the music you love with the push of a button by pressing the Facebook share button to post the song title and other details.

The HTC Status runs on the Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) platform, AT&T’s first smartphone to do so. It is also the first phone in the US with an enhanced version of HTC Sense™ that integrates Facebook into more places than ever before. Facebook content and information is integrated in the clock, dialer, calendar, address book and photo gallery. The HTC Status also features a Facebook chat application that lets you maintain your chat conversations, even when you navigate away to take a call, browse the Web or play a game.  And the Facebook chat widget shows who is available to chat and allows you to initiate a conversation with just a tap.

The HTC Status, with its uni-body design with sleek metal accents, is easy to customize to reflect your style with widgets, shortcuts and wallpapers, and its customizable lock screen lets you open your favorite application quickly when you unlock the screen.

The HTC Status also sports a 5-megapixel camera with auto-focus and LED flash on the back and a front facing camera to easily capture and share self portraits. Above the dedicated physical keyboard, HTC Status has a 2.6-inch touch screen with 480 x 320 resolution and capacitive navigation buttons.

Exclusive custom cases and a screen protector will also be available for sale with the HTC Status at AT&T company-owned retail stores.  Customers can choose from hard- and soft-shell case options from Speck and AGF. The HTC Status will be compatible with a number of universal micro-USB charging options, Bluetooth headsets and corded stereo headsets such as the IFrogz Luxe corded headsets with integrated microphone, which will be available in four colors, black, silver, pink and blue.  Accessories will also be available for sale in AT&T’s online store.

Pricing and Availability

Arriving in stores as the lead device in AT&T’s back to school promotions starting July 17, the HTC Status will be available in AT&T stores and online for $49.99 after a two-year contract. (Minimum $15 data plan required.) Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile standalone stores will feature an exclusive mauve edition.

It looks like the puzzle surrounding the much rumored “Facebook phones” is now beginning to come together thanks to a pair of purported press shots revealed on Monday. Mobile blog pocketnow.com has obtained what appears to be two official mock-ups depicting upcoming Android smartphones from HTC. The most notable feature found on each of these unannounced devices, of course, is the presence of a dedicated Facebook button complete with the Facebook logo. It is unclear what the function of the Facebook button might be, though it seems apparent that the smartphones will feature deep integration with the popular social network. Earlier reports regarding these devices suggested they might launch as Facebook-branded smartphones built for the company by HTC, but Facebook later denied the claims. BGR also exclusively reported possible additional details surrounding the devices last last month. While the phones will apparently not launch as Facebook-branded devices, it is still possible that other details from previous reports are accurate. According to pocketnow.com’s report, the full touchscreen device seen above will launch as the HTC Icon while the QWERTY-equipped smartphone seen after the break will be the HTC Snap 2.

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Facebook on Thursday denied earlier reports that HTC is preparing to unveil multiple Facebook-branded smartphones next month at Mobile World Congress. “This is really just another example of a manufacturer who has taken our public APIs (application programing interfaces) and integrated them into their device in an interesting way,” Facebook’s head of business development Dan Rose told reporters.”The rumors around there being something more to this HTC device are overblown.” Rose did not comment on whether or not Facebook is currently working on branded cell phones without HTC’s involvement.

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We just received information from a tipster who apparently was part of a recent focus group for an upcoming device that appears to be a Facebook phone. Here are some features we anticipate will be part of the eventual Facebook handset based on questions asked at during the session:

• Location aware coupons: you pick main categories of interest. When you’re near any stores that fall into those categories, coupons are automatically pushed to your phone. Basically, it sounds like “Facebook Deals on steroids,” as our tipster elegantly phrased it.
• An always-on GPS service much like Google Latitude that would run in the background. The service would provide automatic “check-ins” and might share your location with friends.
• No local storage (or very little). Everything is cloud-based, including contacts, media, data, etc.
• Obviously the phone will include a camera, but everything will be uploaded automatically and stored in the cloud.
• A news ticker-style message notification system: all messages funnel into one mass inbox, sortable by type, but initially unfiltered. There will also be a ticker of some kind that reads off message content as it’s delivered, regardless of message type.

The handset itself wasn’t specifically referred to as a “Facebook phone,” though our tipster tells us they spent over an hour of the session talking about social media in addition to very specific things like “how many photos do you upload to Facebook a day”, and more.

Facebook will announce two Facebook-branded smartphones at next month’s Mobile World Congress according to a new report from City A.M. The report contradicts Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s earlier claim that the company was not working on branded cell phones, but was instead working to create a better, more comprehensive Facebook experience across existing mobile platforms. HTC will build the new Facebook phones according to the report, and they will feature branding and coloring in line with Facebook’s website. City A.M. goes on to state that the devices will run a modified build of Google’s Android operating system that will display information from a user’s Facebook account on the home screen. Details pertaining to pricing and availability are not yet available.

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We mentioned it a few days ago and rumors were true, something big has come from the Finnish mobile manufacturer. Nokia has just announced in Barcelona, Spain during Nokia World ’08 that it will be launching the N97. This feature-packed phone is guaranteed to please Nokia fans and general phone geeks alike. Apparently, product managers are calling this the “Facebook Phone,” and while it is a little silly, the name doesn’t just come from nowhere. The device is geared toward social networking and multimedia but it doesn’t seem like the business user has been left out, either. Here are some specs to get your appetite going:

• 3.5″, 640 x 360 resistive touch screen (No! Why not capacitive?! Fail.)
• QWERTY keyboard
• Tri-band HSDPA 3G
• 802.11 b/g WiFi
• A-GPS and Stand-alone GPS for directions and geo-tagging
• 32GB Built-In Memory
• microSD expansion support for ADDITIONAL 16GB
• 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics
• Flash Lite 3.0 support and Flash Video in web browser
• Music player up to 36 hours playback time
• Share and Ovi services support

Holy cow, this phone is loaded! Is there anything else you can ask for? 30 frames-per-second video and tons of on-board storage! It has 3G, WiFi, a touch screen and a full QWERTY keyboard and a fully customizable home screen. We’re not going to call this an iPhone killer just yet, but Apple has some serious competition. The biggest feature for a lot of you will be Flash support and Flash video – bonus! This is going to be a killer phone for sure. The N97 will be released in the first half of 2009 and will go for €550, or approximately $695 – maybe. Hit the jump for more images and a video.

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