Facebook Home Announced

Facebook has announced a new product called Facebook Home, for Android phones which will serve as the home screen for your phone. Basically, it functions like a launcher and sits on the home screen and is tightly connected to Facebook. Facebook Home provides you with Facebook experience featuring full-screen photos, status updates, and notifications. Facebook Home will be releasing on April 12th in US and in other countries later.
Home is a whole new experience for your phone. It’s software that turns your Android phone into a great, living, social phone. There are many features available in Facebook Home and lets see what it has to offer.

1. Cover Feed:

Cover Feed is your new lock screen and home screen as it replaces the standard one on your Android phone. It shows what is happening with your friends and relatives in a beautiful, immersive experience. Since Home is both your lock screen and home screen, the content comes right to you. You can flip through to see more stories, and double tap to like what you see. Cover feed is for those in-between moments ­like waiting in line at the tickets counter or between short breaks ­when you want to see what’s going on in your world.

2. Chat Heads:

This is another innovative feature where in you can continue chatting with friends and relatives even when you are using other apps on your phone. When friends send you messages, a chat head appears with your friend’s face, so you see exactly who you’re chatting with. Chat Heads floats on top of any application and since SMS is integrated into Facebook messenger for Android, chat heads include Facebook messages as well as texts.

3. Notifications:

Notifications are important and they are right there in Facebook home. To open notifications, just tap them. And if you don’t want to deal with them right now, you can just swipe to hide them and keep flipping through cover feed until you want them back.

4. Apps:

You might have installed other apps on your phone and want to access them from Home. It’s as easy to get to your apps in Home as it is on any other phone. Swipe up to see your favorite apps in the launcher. There’s also a screen containing all of your apps, and you can drag your favorite apps to the launcher.

How to Download Home?

Home will be available as a free download from the Google Play Store starting April 12 and it works on many new handsets (list below). Home will also be available pre-installed on phones through the Facebook Home Program. HTC and AT&T are the first companies working together to deliver a phone with Home. It’s called the HTC First and it goes on sale April 12.

Devices which are compatible with Home:

• HTC First
• HTC One (Future)
• HTC One X
• HTC One X+
• Samsung GALAXY S III
• Samsung GALAXY S4 (Future)
• Samsung GALAXY Note II