3 ms·

The Facebook Phone

18 points by drpancake 15y ago

rjd 15y ago
Vodafones product page for it: http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/about/what/devices/vodafone_555blue.html#overview http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/about/what/devices/vod...
- schrototo 15y ago
  Seems like a pretty half-assed product. "Vodafone 555 Blue", really, that's what you're gonna call it? Anyone remember the Motorola ROKR? Yeah, exactly...
  - clobber 15y ago
    RAZR, ROKR, RIZR, KRZR, PEBL, SLVR shudders
  - neutronicus 15y ago
    I remember the RAZR... That was the phone for a while.
  - Timothee 15y ago
    To be clear (I don't think I'm putting words in schrototo's mouth), the ROKR was the disaster created jointly by Motorola and Apple. What was special about it? It had a dedicated key to bring up iTunes. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_ROKR_E1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_ROKR_E1) I had the same thought: the OP's venture between Vodafone and Facebook doesn't feel like the "Facebook phone" that has been rumored for a while… but who knows, Facebook doesn't make hardware so they probably don't have the same opportunities that Apple had and they probably want the maximum availability, even if half-assed. (I would think it's harder to completely screw up an experience around posting a status than around managing and syncing a music library)
  - r00fus 15y ago
    I remember that the first "iTunes" phone was really a stalking horse by Apple to learn and understand the phone manufacturers and carriers... then they released the iPhone 2 years later which took over the world. If this is the same type of move by Facebook, good on em... sometimes you learn best from failures.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - rglover 15y ago
    Considering this is supposed to be a Facebook supported phone, this thing looks like crap. Kind of a good idea, but with that sort of hardware and half-baked UI this is just as good as any other "social" phone that's come out in the past three years. Next.
nosequel 15y ago
“We hope to sell millions . . . Anything below millions will be disappointing.” I think they will be disappointed. I can't name a smart phone where it takes more than about 2 keystrokes to do anything you want on Facebook.
- ugh 15y ago
  And those phones cost $100?
- jackolas 15y ago
  That and the Facebook application for Android is one of the worst apps out there.
- andye 15y ago
  ^o^, I only remember this sentence after i read the article, and I laughed...
- rjd 15y ago
  You have to remember price point and demographics. A lot people don't care for smart phones. Smart phones are only a fraction of the phone market as well. Lots of people don't want smart phones for various reasons, lots of people buy them and then regret it like I did. The market is pretty varied. I've gone back to my old Sony because of battery life. I kept forgetting to put my Android on charge every night, next day its flat. Totally worthless phone IMO, gave it away. That said these types of gimmicks usually do fail pretty hard. So disappointment maybe ahead.
  - mirkules 15y ago
    Rjd, my feeling is that you're in the minority. I don't have any numbers to back up my statement, and I think it's safe to say we are both speculating here. This is my reasoning: Even if people don't want smartphones, I would speculate that people who want to be connected to Facebook ALSO want to be connected to other services: Twitter, Google+, etc. Tying a phone (with a contract life cycle of 24 months) to fickle online services with no room for expansion is a letdown waiting to happen. Just my $0.02. Btw, when the iPhone first came out, battery life was a huge issue, which turned out to be a non-issue for the millions of iPhone owners. Most people have an extra cable in the car or office to charge it through the day. And those that didn't, didn't forget to charge it because they loved their iPhone so much. It was really quite fascinating to watch Apple shrug off the battery life issue so eloquently, which, unfortunately set the trend for shorter battery life (e.g. my coworker goes from 100% to 20% in 4 hours on his LG Revolution). I agree with you that this is pretty abysmal, but what can you do...?
d0ne 15y ago
The US version: http://www.htc.com/us/products/status-att http://www.htc.com/us/products/status-att
nextparadigms 15y ago
Any phone can be a Facebook phone.
dpapathanasiou 15y ago
This reminds me of the ESPN phone: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/07/21/bodenheimer-jobs http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/07/21/bodenheimer-jobs
Cherian_Abraham 15y ago
Imagine a phone built purely for Facebook, which is built to their specs (low battery usage) and uses half the bandwidth of current smartphones when it comes to updating FB status, uploading pictures etc. Facebook could have a winner in a country like India, where bandwidth still sucks and there is a large FB user population. A cheap subsidized phone, and maybe even with subsidized bandwidth usage (similar to Amazon Kindle and Sprint) built just for Facebook would be a killer. They could certainly grow their user population beyond a Billion, but the question is whether they could monetize on those users.
- jojopotato 15y ago
  Wasn't this what the Kin was supposed to be?
omn1 15y ago
It was clear they eventually team up with a phone company when they revealed the new messaging system in November of last year. This is a big step to further establish their platform. That said I would have expected a device with a bigger display and less buttons. This looks like a business phone to manage your spare time. I hope this is just a mockup of the homescreen as it features icons that look nearly the same (three icons that could mean "contacts" and two that could be for "messages"). Also browsing the web might not be a great experience. I think they could have lowered the price tag and make browsing on Facebook free focusing more on ad revenue.
muratmutlu 15y ago
This isn't anymore a Facebook phone than the INQ stuff

18 points by drpancake 15y ago

rjd 15y ago

Vodafones product page for it: http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/about/what/devices/vodafone_555blue.html#overview http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/about/what/devices/vod...

schrototo 15y ago
Seems like a pretty half-assed product. "Vodafone 555 Blue", really, that's what you're gonna call it? Anyone remember the Motorola ROKR? Yeah, exactly...
- clobber 15y ago
  RAZR, ROKR, RIZR, KRZR, PEBL, SLVR shudders
- neutronicus 15y ago
  I remember the RAZR... That was the phone for a while.
- Timothee 15y ago
  To be clear (I don't think I'm putting words in schrototo's mouth), the ROKR was the disaster created jointly by Motorola and Apple. What was special about it? It had a dedicated key to bring up iTunes. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_ROKR_E1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_ROKR_E1) I had the same thought: the OP's venture between Vodafone and Facebook doesn't feel like the "Facebook phone" that has been rumored for a while… but who knows, Facebook doesn't make hardware so they probably don't have the same opportunities that Apple had and they probably want the maximum availability, even if half-assed. (I would think it's harder to completely screw up an experience around posting a status than around managing and syncing a music library)
- r00fus 15y ago
  I remember that the first "iTunes" phone was really a stalking horse by Apple to learn and understand the phone manufacturers and carriers... then they released the iPhone 2 years later which took over the world. If this is the same type of move by Facebook, good on em... sometimes you learn best from failures.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- rglover 15y ago
  Considering this is supposed to be a Facebook supported phone, this thing looks like crap. Kind of a good idea, but with that sort of hardware and half-baked UI this is just as good as any other "social" phone that's come out in the past three years. Next.

nosequel 15y ago

“We hope to sell millions . . . Anything below millions will be disappointing.” I think they will be disappointed. I can't name a smart phone where it takes more than about 2 keystrokes to do anything you want on Facebook.

ugh 15y ago
And those phones cost $100?
jackolas 15y ago
That and the Facebook application for Android is one of the worst apps out there.
andye 15y ago
^o^, I only remember this sentence after i read the article, and I laughed...
rjd 15y ago
You have to remember price point and demographics. A lot people don't care for smart phones. Smart phones are only a fraction of the phone market as well. Lots of people don't want smart phones for various reasons, lots of people buy them and then regret it like I did. The market is pretty varied. I've gone back to my old Sony because of battery life. I kept forgetting to put my Android on charge every night, next day its flat. Totally worthless phone IMO, gave it away. That said these types of gimmicks usually do fail pretty hard. So disappointment maybe ahead.
- mirkules 15y ago
  Rjd, my feeling is that you're in the minority. I don't have any numbers to back up my statement, and I think it's safe to say we are both speculating here. This is my reasoning: Even if people don't want smartphones, I would speculate that people who want to be connected to Facebook ALSO want to be connected to other services: Twitter, Google+, etc. Tying a phone (with a contract life cycle of 24 months) to fickle online services with no room for expansion is a letdown waiting to happen. Just my $0.02. Btw, when the iPhone first came out, battery life was a huge issue, which turned out to be a non-issue for the millions of iPhone owners. Most people have an extra cable in the car or office to charge it through the day. And those that didn't, didn't forget to charge it because they loved their iPhone so much. It was really quite fascinating to watch Apple shrug off the battery life issue so eloquently, which, unfortunately set the trend for shorter battery life (e.g. my coworker goes from 100% to 20% in 4 hours on his LG Revolution). I agree with you that this is pretty abysmal, but what can you do...?

d0ne 15y ago

The US version: http://www.htc.com/us/products/status-att http://www.htc.com/us/products/status-att

nextparadigms 15y ago

Any phone can be a Facebook phone.

dpapathanasiou 15y ago

This reminds me of the ESPN phone: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/07/21/bodenheimer-jobs http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/07/21/bodenheimer-jobs

Cherian_Abraham 15y ago

Imagine a phone built purely for Facebook, which is built to their specs (low battery usage) and uses half the bandwidth of current smartphones when it comes to updating FB status, uploading pictures etc. Facebook could have a winner in a country like India, where bandwidth still sucks and there is a large FB user population. A cheap subsidized phone, and maybe even with subsidized bandwidth usage (similar to Amazon Kindle and Sprint) built just for Facebook would be a killer. They could certainly grow their user population beyond a Billion, but the question is whether they could monetize on those users.

jojopotato 15y ago
Wasn't this what the Kin was supposed to be?

omn1 15y ago

It was clear they eventually team up with a phone company when they revealed the new messaging system in November of last year. This is a big step to further establish their platform. That said I would have expected a device with a bigger display and less buttons. This looks like a business phone to manage your spare time. I hope this is just a mockup of the homescreen as it features icons that look nearly the same (three icons that could mean "contacts" and two that could be for "messages"). Also browsing the web might not be a great experience. I think they could have lowered the price tag and make browsing on Facebook free focusing more on ad revenue.

muratmutlu 15y ago

This isn't anymore a Facebook phone than the INQ stuff