The Facebook Phone
ft.com
ft.com
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.
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.
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...?
I know I'm an extremely impatient person, which means I loose my cool over things like battery life. That impatience usually does make me a minority as I reject half arsed products (sometimes to early). I'm also very busy, and things like worrying about cell phone battery life are really low on my priority list, often I'm only aware when I get the warning beeps while having a conversation. Having to actively worry about my phone ... when others I don't... makes it a useless product to me, it needs to do its job and not make my life more difficult.
But I can't help looking at the reported 40% return rate for android phones and start to think there is a problem there... and maybe theres multiple issues going on, battery issues maybe for some, carrier apps yo can't delete reported in other threads here, warranty issues, standard Android UI/usability issues no one has ever fixed.
Then theres reports of weird java versions especially compiled for unique chips that aren't library complete/compatible... meaning apps aren't portable. Carriers and manufacturers refusing to supply upgraded firmware, and voiding your warranty if you do it yourself.
Its a real mess, and people are complaining and advising people not to buy them. I advised both my parents to hold out for the iPhone 5 because of this, I've heard a few Android owners I work with regretting the purchases.
Anway I'm prepared to accept I'm wrong ;)
Anyone remember the Motorola ROKR? Yeah, exactly...
shudders
That was the phone for a while.
What was special about it? It had a dedicated key to bring up iTunes. (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)
If this is the same type of move by Facebook, good on em... sometimes you learn best from failures.
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.
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.