…

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

We’re not even a week out from Facebook’s announcement of the HTC First and their new home replacement called Facebook Home, and we already have a leaked beta build to play around with. Thanks to Modaco, you can give Home a spin as long as your device has a screen resolution of 1280×768 or less and doesn’t have Facebook baked into your system (meaning you can uninstall Facebook). If you have a Nexus, it would be the perfect phone to test this on. 

Back in early February, specs were leaked for an HTC device codenamed the M4. The M4 didn’t have any specs that jumped off the page, but now there is an apparent image floating around the web for the upcoming device. And what excellent timing and coincidence that the HTC First was debuted yesterday, with almost matching specs. A 4.3″ 720p display, Snapdragon processor, 1GB of RAM, and not much else going on. 

As you have already seen, today’s coverage mostly focused around the announcement of Facebook’s Home launcher for Android and their partnership with both AT&T and HTC to create the HTC First. This size of an investment in the mobile space is what Facebook has been needing, given that the mobile experience for their service on Android is somewhat lacking.

Kellen already ran through his initial reaction, but since I was actually at the event, thought I would go over my initial reaction to today’s announcements as well. 

So far, what I think is great on Facebook’s part is that they are not limiting this new experience to only those that buy an HTC First. Android users that currently own one of the five initially supported devices will be able to download Home from Google Play and immediately immerse themselves with status updates and pictures from friends. By taking this route, Facebook is truly trying to put this experience into the hands of as many people as possible. It may not seem that way yet, since the HTC First is an AT&T exclusive, but that was purely a business move.

With Home as your default launcher, you have the ability to access instant messages between friends no matter what you are doing on your device, look through your News Feed as soon as you unlock the device, and bookmark certain applications that you use more often than others. While Home does seem sort of like an extremely dignified widget, there are bound to be hundreds of thousands of users in no time at all.

Let us know down below if you plan on making Facebook’s Home your default launcher of choice. As a bonus, feel free to let us know why or why not in the comments section below. Personally, I am dying to hear everyone’s thoughts on this.

 Loading ...

All talk across the tech universe has been about Facebook today, and I’m sure you have had just about enough, so I’ll try to make this one of our last topics. As you know, Facebook unveiled Facebook Home along with a new phone that can run it, the HTC First. This is Facebook finally realizing that mobile is extremely important to the future of their company – well, either that or after feeling enough pressure from shareholders they had no choice but to start taking it seriously. And since Android is as “open” as it gets in the mobile space, they saw an opportunity to put Facebook first, if you will, and created a home replacement that should eventually work on almost any semi-current Android device.

As I watched the presentation and all of our coverage following, all sorts of things jumped out to me as either important or newsworthy and wanted to share. This is my early take on Facebook Home. 

Today is a big day for AT&T. If you’ve been waiting anxiously (since this morning) to buy the Facebook inspired HTC First, you will be happy to know that the pre-order page is live right now. $99.99 on a new contract, the phone will ship to you next week if you hurry up. If you’ve been waiting for that other HTC phone, the One, you’ll be happy as well. 

This morning’s Facebook event was not just a one-time event if Zuckerberg has his way. Within the press conference there was the announcement of the Facebook Home Program that Facebook has created to sign on with different partners to possible bring more Home devices to the masses. HTC, Samsung, Sony, Qualcomm, AT&T, Huawei and ZTE were some of the names on the list.