The Facebook Phone Review: Let’s Just Pretend This Isn’t It

Sam Biddle — The FACEBOOK PHONE is here. As it turns out, it's a lot like a non-Facebook phone—a small Android phone with an astoundingly excellent keyboard. It just happens to have a Facebook button! Does this matter? Not much, no.

Why It Matters

The notion of a "Facebook phone" is conceptually slippery. Is it a phone with a Facebook OS? Hardware designed by Zuck during a wistful walk in the woods? It's hard to pinpoint exactly what we'd even expect from such a thing. Isn't every smartphone a Facebook sorta? Windows Phone and WebOS directly integrate Facebook with your address book; iPhone and Android sync your Facebook contacts.

So maybe the HTC Status faces an impossible challenge of realizing an ideal that's sort of half baked to begin with. Yet it tries. It's a regular Android 2.3 phone, with its Facebook functionality pushed to the fore, literally, by a button. If you care deeply about Facebook, it says to you, this is the phone you're going to want above all.

Specs: HTC Status
Display: 2.6-inch 480x320 resolution
Battery: 1250 mAh lithium-ion
Processor: MSM7227, 800 MHz
Memory: 512 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM
OS: Android 2.3 + HTC Sense
Cameras: 5 MP Rear camera; VGA Front-facing
Price: $50 with two-year contract

Using It

As a piece of hardware, the Status is shockingly, remarkably decent. The phone's healthy-feeling plastic and metal body is subtly curved to hug your face. The QWERTY keyboard is snappy and not too small to belt out messages. Overall, it's a lot like using a brand new Blackberry, if Blackberry OS weren't a heap of fecal matter and glass shards. But that display. A mere 2.6-inch, 480 x 320 screen. It's squinty.

The Facebook button. That's the whole reason we're here, right? Located at the Status' bottom right quarter, as if HTC ran out of room and just bolted it there, it triggers a few context-sensitive sharing actions. Tap from the home screen and it'll jump you straight into status updating or post writing. Hit it while on a webpage to share a story on your wall. Hold it down for location updates. And that's about it.

Should I Buy It?

Don't think of this as a Facebook phone, and you've got a sturdy, serviceable Gingerbread phone for fifty bucks. My iPhone is a Facebook phone after all—I can share photos, write on my mom's wall, and share annoying articles with my annoying friends. The Facebook Phone isn't a Facebook Phone—it's a cheap, decent Android phone with some good Facebook shortcuts.


yeahjacklim:I think is hard to get in Malaysia!!!

[ Via: Gizmodo ]