HTC to produce exclusive Facebook smartphone, bitch

Talk of a Facebook phone resurfaced today amid familiar rumours that the Zuckerberg-owned firm has joined forces with phone-maker HTC to produce an Android handset heavily customised for social networkers.

The jointly-developed smartphone is expected to launch in Q3 2012 at the earliest, unnamed "industry sources" say, DigiTimes reports.

Unlike the HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa, which both featured Facecrack integration, the latest will apparently sport its own platform exclusive to the site. This should see even deeper fusion and custom social networking functionality brought to the device.

Time for a ChaCha-change?

Rumours of such a handset have been floating around for years, with talk of a Facebook phone first doing the rounds in 2010.

While the newest whispers could turn out to be just as weightless, now with almost a billion users, Facebook certainly has a fair few punters it could poke into picking one up. ®