Earlier this month AT&T and Facebook announced the HTC First, the first device to ship running Facebook Home.  Low and behold, we got a package in the mail which was exactly that.  I spent the majority of the day navigating through Facebook Home and the pure Android side of the device.  My notes notes on my initial encounter lies below.

  • The HTC First as phone is addictive to hold.  It has a nice weight and fell as it is covered with a high-quality matte plastic.  Making it a mid-level Android smartphone leaning towards premium.  So simple its sexy in design.
  • The 4.3inch LCD display is still a great one.  4.3inch is still an ideal display size as its bigger than the iPhone 5.  I checked out a few YouTube videos and offered great viewing angles.  
  • From the few shots I took with its 5MP camera, the results were disappointing.  Both in daylight and low-light.   Gonna try to get better shots for the full review.
  • Equipped with Qualcomm’s latest 1.4GHz dual-core 400 Snapdragon processor + 1GB of RAM = Zero. Lag. Whatsoever. 
  • The 2000 mAh battery definitely seems to hold a charge.  I got about 10 hours of moderate usage without a full charge.
  • Facebook Home thus far is an interesting concept as skin/launcher running on top of Android.  Pretty limited in regards to navigating through posts other than just viewing photos.  
  • Chat Heads is easily the shinning star of Facebook Home.  Messaging (texting or FB Messenger) on top of any app where you can easily dismiss & continue what you were doing.  Nice!
  • It’s a little weird to have the Menu button on the right of the Home button and the Back on the left.  You can adapt to it easily.  
  • You can turn FB Home off and rock pure Android on it if you wanted to as well.  

I’ll keep digging for more findings and more details to elaborate on my full review coming soon.  If you have any questions you want answered in the review, feel free to comment.  
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Categories: Android ATT hands-on HTC