First Android Phone To Come With Facebook Home, HTC First

HTC First is the first Facebook phone. Facebook wanted to become integrated with the social life of the users by connecting through their smartphones. It seemed like a good idea but in truth, it isn’t really. Facebook has over billion users but it is good at what it is – social networking.

Facebook works wonderful as an application itself so taking the place of HTC Sense does not seem like the thinking of ‘now’ since there is still a struggle to separate virtual and physical life. Maybe in the future it would make sense that social and virtual life have combined to become one with even more advanced technology but that isn’t the time right now.

One can say, maybe Facebook thought too much ahead of the current times. But how does that effect HTC? They took the risk of using Facebook Home instead of the usual HTC Sense. And, that is one of the many reasons that HTC First has failed to win the international market.

What will be the state of sales in India, we have to see. But at the price tag it is coming, I am sure that it will be bound to fail since there are many smartphones in the market that offer really good deals at the same price, including HTC One X.

So, what makes this smartphone such a big deal or rather, not a big deal? Why has it failed to grasp the market and consumers?

HTC First Features & Specs

HTC First comes with a pretty basic design and hardware and the price isn’t up to par at all. The display is a 4.3-inches Super LCD with 1280*720p resolution at 341ppi. That sounds good – so far. Then we have a Qualcomm’s dual-core CPU at 1.4GHz and 1GB RAM.

Even that sounds pretty mid-range. It has16GB support for internal storage and as is usual with HTC, no external storage. Now, that does not sound good at all. Since 16GB these days seems like 64GB Hard Disk for PC now. But at least, in the case of PC, it is still upgradeable.

We have a mere 5MP camera with 1080p video recording when other smartphones are offering 8MP for their mid-range to high-end series. We do have the usual 2G, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC and USB connections,nevertheless, that is something you can find in basic smartphone these days. The battery is 2,000mAh and gives sufficient battery life.

Overall, what HTC has to offer is not something new at all so it does not make sense to manufacture a smartphone to sell a launcher. If it was, then HTC could have worked upon the hardware to make the device worthy of buying even with Facebook Home.

HTC has always made the big mistake of refusing to give external storage support and irremovable battery. Because of that, we can undoubtedly expect that HTC’s smartphones will always be dominated by Samsung smartphones since they offer everything a consumer can ever ask for and sometimes more.

HTC First : The verdict

HTC First is a pretty average smartphone with Facebook Home launcher on Android 4.1 but the main reason for lack of interest in the consumers isn’t just Facebook Home. The price tag is ridiculous for such a smartphone with limited features when Micromax and Karbonn offer much better smartphones at a lower price.

Since Facebook Home is already available for download at Play Store it goes one more step ahead to make HTC First insignificant. One main reason anyone would ever buy HTC First is because of the clean version of Jelly Bean 4.1 that you can use instead of Facebook Home.

The UI of Jelly Bean is fabulous and a lot better and you can make that as the default Home Launcher instead of Facebook Home. Or it will excite those who are overtly fanatic about Facebook.

Facebook Home right now seems to be a ridiculous notion but maybe they are on to something very futuristic. Whatever it maybe, as of now, the consumers don’t want to grab their smartphones and see the posts and comments by their friends as the first thing.

We know that not every single one of our friends will post stuff according to our preferences and to have someone stare at you from their profile picture the first thing in the morning (or night) can be disconcerting. But HTC One will not be let go as easily for giving us one of the failed gadgets of the year because of the very limited features with a launcher you can download at Play Store for the price of Rs. 25,000.