Official Facebook Phone Unveiled: Vodafone 555 Blue

Vodafone has unleashed what it claims to be the world's first designated prepay phone that is aimed squarely at Facebook fans (the INQ Cloud Touch is also available on contract). Indeed, the handset itself has been designed in collaboration with the social networking giant and even features the iconic "F" logo as a separate button.

The Vodafone 555 Blue (which sounds a bit like a 1980s porn movie, to be honest) is fairly basic in functionality and connectivity: There's a QWERTY keypad, 2.4-inch display, and 2-megapixel camera (with flash)

It can play MP3s, WMAs and AACs through built-in music software, and its 40MB of on-board can be upgraded through SD card support (up to 16GB). There's also an FM radio and Bluetooth 2.1.

And, of course, Facebook is built into its core, running from the off. Messages from your FB friends will appear in your inbox alongside emails. It also updates automatically in the background, so you can always keep informed of what's going on in your social networking world.

There's also the Opera Mini 5 web browser on board for internet tomfoolery. But it is only a 2.5G device, so it's not designed to munch away on massive amounts of data (just as well, really. As a pre-pay handset, you don't want to run out of credit quickly for phone calls, for example).

Vodafone will be releasing the 555 Blue globally in the near future, through its own shops and online. Pricing is yet to be confirmed but is expected to be around the £100 mark.

Facebook’s New iPhone App EXPOSED!

Just hours ago, we reported on a leak that revealed a new photo sharing app Facebook has been working on. We’re now getting our hands on even more screenshots showcasing other features, such as commenting features built right in, as well photo capturing (although that wasn’t all that surprising).

Instead of nagging you with boring details, we’re cutting it straight to the chase: below are some of the features we found the most compelling from the mockups.
Photo capturing and sharing built right in:

As expected, this new app seems to allow users to capture pictures straight from the camera App. The capturing feature looks and feels very similar to the native iOS camera app, as you can tell from the pictures below:

Once users are done taking pictures, they can choose whether to share them or not. From the sharing screen, users can also insert tags if they’d like. Users apparently won’t be forced to share pictures right away either:

Single Shot and Multi-Shot Modes:
More interesting, this app seems to have two modes: single shot and multi-shot. While the former seems to be meant to be a quick way to take  a photo, tag it, assign it to a place (yes, you can do that) and submit it; multi-shot lets you do the same thing, only with many pictures, presumably for big events, such as parties.

"Likes" and Comments:
This app will also be able to display likes and comments, as expected. Although the mockups below don’t look anywhere near finished, they hint at a possible slide-up function in order to unveil comments on any picture. We’ll have to see where this goes...

Official Facebook Phones in Partnership with HTC To Launch As Soon As Next Month – Report

With Facebook’s 600m users it was surely only a matter of time before the king of the social networks decided it wanted to enter the mobile phone fray, and according to City AM that time could well be as early as February.

Believed to be manufactured by phone hardware behemoth HTC, the Facebook phone (we hope that’s not what it will be called) is expected to be announced during next month’s Mobile World Congress and will be powered by a customized version of Google’s Android operating system. It’s anticipated that Facebook’s popular news feeds and status updates will form the core of the interface, possibly living on the handset’s homescreen. HTC’s ability to ‘skin’ Android is believed to be one of the main reason Mark Zuckerberg’s startup turned billion Dollar company decided to plump for the Taiwanese company as a partner.

Interestingly Joe Hewitt is believed to be one of the key players in the development of the handset. Those with long memories may remember Hewitt ceasing development of Facebook’s iPhone app last year citing frustrations with Apple’s ecosystem as the root cause. Is this what the man with the golden touch has been working on ever since?

Former Googler Matthew Papakipos is also on the team according to City AM.

Is this just another step toward world domination for Zuckerberg? Love him or loathe him, the guy knows how to make products people want to use. Time will tell if the mobile phone world is the next to be conquered by the Zuck.

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