Facebook Home And The Promise Of Android | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Home And The Promise Of Android

techcrunch.com

23 pointstalhof811 comments

I don't get the fragmentation argument here - there is nothing about Facebook Home that prevents it from being used on Android 2.x - all of the functions it uses are available there. The choice of Android 4+ is simply to make development easier. This is exactly the same as choosing to only target Chrome and ignoring IE6, which many new developments (Google included) now do. The whole argument about the differences between Android and the Web in this case simply don't hold up, as it's exactly the same situation.

"Fragmentation" is a horrible name, and sometimes people use it to refer to problems that don't actually exist, but there is a very serious problem with Android updates: While iPhone users can expect prompt updates directly from Apple, Android OEMs and the carriers they do business with effectively make phones you buy at the carriers' shops nearly impossible to update. That's horrible, and the Nexus branding and technology program hasn't fixed it. Way too few Nexus devices, way too many OEMs.

All that said, targeting Android 4.x+ is rational. Facebook Home is going to push some capacity boundaries. No reason to buy trouble by targeting earlier revisions.

However, neither my TF300 nor my Nexus 4 are listed as compatible. So Facebook has somehow taken a crummy situation and made it even worse. It apperently isn't compatible with all 4.x devices.

"However, neither my TF300 nor my Nexus 4 are listed as compatible. [...] It apperently isn't compatible with all 4.x devices."

It is running perfectly fine on my Nexus 4.

The Play Store does not offer to install it on my Nexus 4, which is on AT&T via Straight Talk. All choices are greyed-out.

I think its a pretty insightful point that Android as enabler for third parties is so good. That point is often missed, even when Amazon showed you could create a nice new product with it. According to the age poll most people here won't remember back when MS/PC Dos was mostly a command line and people like Norton made a "visual shell" which gave you behavior like windows. Later Microsoft added APIs for windows and then people wrote their own environments around that too. Similar to the Unity/Gnome/KDE/... differences on Linux, heck even on the same Debian distro. Historically, its been hard to stay the leader if other systems can innovate and your system can't. (granted with exceptions)

Bottom line is that the point that Facebook didn't have to make a phone to make a phone experience is much more interesting than the actual app itself.

Disregarding if Facebook Home is a good: Android is rapidly evolving into directions no one would have imagined 12 months ago.

Nobody has to ask Google for permission what they are gonna do with Android -- no one had to ask what they are doing with the web, either.

Wow, just heard about this. I can't imagine installing an App and having it completely muck up the notification bar, look and feel and more for the phone.

If all you do is use Facebook on your phone then I guess this is magnificent.

Me neither. But look at the mainstream, the youth. Mobile, FB and picture sharing is the new mass media.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is FB's first step into building an own mobile OS (or own distribution) since the main task of a mobile device is still communication with close contacts -- and that's all Facebook is about.

Yep no one should under estimate how many people are using SmartPhones almost exclusively for FaceBook and texting. That's why Messenger is so front and center in FaceBook Home. It covers both of the 'killer apps' for a lot of people. As far as developing their own mobile OS or Android distribution I think that's still Plan B depending on what Google does. I think they see way more potential in this transformative approach with FaceBook Home. They don't have any liability of not being competitive/diverse enough on hardware. Buy whatever you want -- cheap, expensive, big, small, whatever. Dipping their toes into hardware partnerships is a smart Plan B. I've never been too impressed by FaceBook's strategic moves especially in mobile but this transformative approach is brilliant. I would be shocked if other companies don't embrace the same strategy. It's going to really change the SmartPhone landscape and put Google in a very tough spot.

And I won't be surprised if Facebook OS is a fork of Android.

I see it more likely being a fork of Firefox OS or something new that takes the same route.

All Facebook should need is a browser for their OS, if they provide a browser as good as or better than Chrome for Android they should be fine. The Facebook apps we use on desktop are just browser apps, and it'd be very easy to win developers over that way, plus the App Center is already there serving web apps.

And going with the web should help them stay away from competing with partners like Apple and Microsoft.

All in all their bottom line is Facebook as a service, all they need is to provide something that brings users to using Facebook more and to see more ads.

They've likely even thought of this themselves but are waiting it out to see the web mature more.

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