Facebook has extended invites to its Menlo Park, California headquarters on April 4th to show reporters its new collaboration with Android.
However, they released precious little information over what the event will cover, causing many to speculate that the social networking giant is finally launching its own, Facebook-friendly phone.
A source told TechCrunch that the phone will be an Android OS running on HTC, and have several prominent features that tie back to social interactions on Facebook.
TechCrunch further speculates that the phone could rely on some of its systems like messenger, and give phone users notifications on their home screen.
A source told the website that instead of a brand-new Facebook phone, it would be an Android phone that is modified to optimize the Facebook application.
9to5Google further reported that both Facebook and Android have been working on marketing campaigns for the new smartphone.
Taiwanese-owned company HTC released a similar phone in 2011 that was built on the Android platform but contained Facebook branding.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that building a specific phone for Facebook was never in the plans for the company.
‘There are a lot of things you can build in other operating systems, as well, that aren’t really taking, that aren’t really like building out a whole phone, which wouldn’t make much sense for us to do,’ he said.
