Meet Facebook’s Buffy, a possible smartphone slayer. Facebook are building a killer HTC smartphone named Buffy which it hopes will catapult it further into users hands. The project tipped by AllThingsD, claims the Social Network’s latest project involves HTC, who chose the Taiwanese giant over rivals Samsung, which would make sense, since the Android carrier has already developed Facebook speciality phones in the form of Salsa and ChaCha.
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| HTC Salsa and ChaCha |
So what else will the Facebook addicts smartphone dream offer compared to a normal phone?
Codenamed ‘Buffy’ plans to have social networking at its “core” according to the report, and will rund a “modified” version of Android (although probably without Google+) HTML5, meaning it can bypass Google Android and Apple software and let the network grab a large slice of the commission made on mobile transactions for itself
Mark Zuckerberg’s brainchild has already made moves to develop HTML 5 ready apps for WP7, iOS and Android.
If Buffy is real, it would mean the social network would be giving Apple the two fingers, considering iPhone users are among the main consumer of Facebook app, and is frequently the No.1 free app in the iTunes App Store.
Recent figures showed more than 85 million registered iPhone Facebook app users, 52m for Android and 38m BlackBerry.
A Facebook spokesperson refused to deny the existence of Buffy, but did tell AllThingsD:
“Our mobile strategy is simple: We think every mobile device is better if it is deeply social.
“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.”
The HTC Facebook phone may take as long as 12-18 months, the reports indicates.
