During a Facebook event today, the social network announced Home, a deep integration of Facebook into Android. The idea behind Home is a phone that’s built around people instead of apps.
The main feature of Home is the Cover Feed. It brings up all the latest photos from your News Feed to the homescreen of your phone. Users navigate through the photos by swiping left and right. Users can also double tap images to like them, and can comment from the homescreen as well.
Notifications get a substantial update in Home as well. All notifications will show up on the home screen as separate entries. Tapping the notification will bring up the Facebook app for further interaction. If you want to get rid of it, you can just toss it off the screen. Holding one of the notifications will lump them all together if you so wish to disregard all of them at once.
Apps will not be affected by Home as they can be easily accessed by holding the image of your face and swiping.
The final feature of Home is called Chatheads. As its name implies, it collects SMS and Facebook Messenger in one place. The interesting part is that each message shows up at the top right as a small circle containing the profile picture of your friends. These will pop up regardless of whatever app you’re in.
Facebook Home will be available on Android phones that have both the Facebook and Facebook Messenger installed. If you meet these prerequisites, the Facebook app will contain a link to the Google Play store to download Facebook Home.
Facebook Home will be updated every month, just like the Facebook mobile app. It will also come to tablets in the coming months.
Facebook Home will be initially available on the HTC One X, HTC One X+, HTC One, Samsung Galaxy S III, Samsung Galaxy Note II and the Samsung Galaxy S4 starting April 12. It’s also coming to the HTC First, a phone built with Facebook Home specifically in mind.