We thought HTC had pretty much put the whole Facebook phone thing to rest last year when the Salsa and ChaCha arrived on the scene complete with their dedicated Facebook buttons and did... well, not very much to be honest.
But no, it seems HTC is a sucker (or Zucker?) for punishment, and the latest rumour hitting our ears via the mobile grapevine is that the company is ready to have another go.
The concept of a Facebook-branded phone has always been an intriguing one – despite the fact that both HTC and INQ Mobile have actually tried – and failed – to get the idea off the ground.
Still, with the social network closing in on the magic billion user milestone, and more than half of those users being mobile-based, it's understandable that the idea won't go away.
Or at least it is until you think about it properly for a few seconds. The very fact that Facebook now has half a billion mobile users is pretty clear evidence that both Facebook itself and the general public thinks any phone can be a Facebook phone. All you need is the phone itself and a Facebook app. Easy.
That's why the Salsa and ChaCha never really took off. As phones they were nothing special, and the whole Facebook hardware button thing felt like a complete gimmick when everyone seemed to be doing perfectly fine with their non-Facebook-buttoned phones already.
But that's just our opinion, and HTC seems to believe differently, with DigiTimes quoting unnamed sources as saying an HTC-made Facephone phone will launch sometime in Q3 using a platform “exclusive to Facebook to enable and integrate all functions available on the social networking site”.
The rationale behind the move appears to be that Facebook is growing and diversifying its investments, and so sees an own-brand smartphone as a natural extension of its development strategy.
Hmmm... wasn't that what people were saying last year? And the year before? And...
