Facebook Home for Android officially announced

Today Facebook Home for Android was officially announced during a special media event held by the social networking company. Facebook Home is an Android launcher which replaces your stock (existing) launcher and offers a whole new experience centered around the Facebook social networking platform.

Facebook Home is “designed around people” instead of prioritizing apps. It aims to offer a more personalized experience for Facebook users through an easy to use minimalistic interface. As soon as the phone is turned on you will see a list of notifications with their profile pictures at the bottom. You can dismiss these notifications with a simple swipe to the side. If you swipe up you will have a list of all the installed applications.

Next we will have a a feature called Chat Heads on Facebook Home. This feature combines the normal SMS texting feature on your device with the Facebook Messaging system. You will have a icon indicating the person you are chatting with on the top corner of Facebook Home for quick access. You will even have a counter showing how many messages you have missed.

Facebook Home will be initially available on select Android smartphones (HTC One, HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung Galaxy S III, Samsung Galaxy S4, Samsung Galaxy Note II) on April 12 to users in the United States. The service will eventually be extended to other devices which run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean or higher. A tablet version of the launcher is also in development and is expected to be released later this year.

Facebook has also partnered with several handset manufacturers to optimize the Home experience. Partners include AT&T, Orange, Qualcomm, HTC, Samsung, Huawei, Sony, EE, ZTE, Lenovo, and Alcatel. HTC will partner with AT&T to release the HTC First with Facebook Home optimized for it.

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Do you own one of the device which will be supported by Facebook Home? Or do you plan to purchase the Facebook Home optimized HTC First? Share your thoughts below.