Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Facebook has built a beautiful Home on Android

Last Friday Facebook presented its Home and by that started a real discussion. Facebook Ceo Mark Zuckerberg stressed that despite long-standing rumors Facebook didn’t announce a “Facebook phone” and that they were not going to create Facebook phone operating system. The new product – Facebook Home – is just a replacement for Android’s standard home screen. It was installed just on one new smartphone yet – HTC’s First. The application may be installed on a few different existing devices from Samsung and HTC. It happens quite rarely when such a simple product – and Home can be described in several words: this is a news feed of a social network on the home screen of a mobile device – so it happens rarely when such a simple product creates such a wide range of opinions. Moreover we are not only discussing on that topic but we are also trying to understand what is Home and to what results its popularization may lead. And it is not doubtful that the project is going to be popular: a billion of Facebook users is not a joke.

The first question clarified during two days of discussion concerns the type of the product. The project of Facebook is an application that occupies the home screen of a device to output some useful information and if it is needed it is able to launch other programs. It allows ranking it as a launcher. There are dozens of such applications, and it is not only independent mobile apps developers who work with them but huge vendors such as HTC, Motorola, Samsung.

The thing that was really unexpected was the reaction of Microsoft. One of the managers of the company – Frank Show – explained in his blog that the software giant had already implemented the same ideas in its Windows Phone two years earlier. According to Show, Home is just a superstructure that compensates fundamental Android disadvantages.

Few words about the author of the article: Karol McMill, professional copywriter publishing articles on different IT topics - software and hardware for business and entertainment, mobile applications for iPhone and Android, gadgets and widgets to improve the efficiency. Prefers Armani designer clothing and likes cooking with wine.

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