Before mobile was this big, Facebook tried their own platform and bottled it. This was during the period that the market was still diverse, with Windows phones, Blackberries, etc.
They also tried to make mobile web a thing for a few years past when it was obvious that native apps were the way forward.
> They also tried to make mobile web a thing for a few years past when it was obvious that native apps were the way forward.
This was one of the first friction Facebook encountered with Apple. They wanted to make their own store in the Facebook app on iOS, but obviously Apple said no. Maybe doing Facebook app in HTML5 was a way to protest against the way Apple was moving things forward, but again it didn't work, their app was crap and they rewrote everything in native.
Not commenting on if the phones were good / used I never had one :) just trying to remember the state of things back then