Facebook press event rumours turned out to be mostly true, but the social network won’t be delivering a single smartphone or a single operating system, instead, they have redesigned the Android OS to have better interaction between Facebook and the user.
Mark Zuckerberg took the stage and announced they will change the way you interact with your phone, by taking away the app priority and replacing it with people. Now, instead of being greeted with a selection of apps, you will be greeted with a selection of people.
Facebook Home is the new skin for Android, and it adds many custom features, including a whole new lock screen and way to interact with your Facebook friends and Facebook content. Instead of a simple lock screen, Facebook has embedded the News Feed, in a new, mobile centric way, and they are now calling it ‘Cover Feed’.
You can swipe through all the current content on Facebook, including friends, pages, people you follow and likes. The idea is to give you a simple way to check Facebook, without having to unlock the phone and then open the app. From Cover Feed you can like, comment and swipe through all current content.
Notifications will pop up on your lock screen as well, and you can interact with them on the Cover Feed or you can throw them away for a later date. You can delete individual notifications by swiping left, and the whole system is very native to Android and works very smoothly, something jargon to Facebook, who until 2012 continued to use web based language on iOS and Android.
Facebook has also added a system for using Messenger easier, and they are calling this, rather hysterically, Chat Heads. When you get an incoming message, the message will pop up on your screen when using any app. Instead of adding the notification at the top, you can move the notification to be placed at your choosing, a neat feature that really works.
The ‘Chat Heads’ will pop up and then you can either reply to them, store them somewhere on your screen or just throw them all away and check later. The impressive feature is you don’t need to move out the app you are already in to chat, Messenger just overlays on top of the app you are using.
This new feature will be available for download on the Google Play Store, starting April 12 on the HTC One, One X, Galaxy S4, Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note II. The HTC First will be the first smartphone to have Facebook Home from the get-go.
