Facebook Planning Deep Integration with Upcoming Smartphones

If you wanted Facebook on your phone, you're about to get your wish: many times over, it would appear. Facebook announced in a blog post this morning that it has been working with several application developers, operators and hardware manufacturers from the mobile industry with the goal of making sure you can never get away from Facebook (even if you wanted to) as long as you have your phone with you.

“Over the past six months, we built the Facebook for Feature Phones app with Snaptu to bring improved Facebook functionality to over 2,500 different devices. We also launched 0.facebook.com as a faster and free way for people to access Facebook around the world, including locations where connectivity is especially costly and slow,” said the company in the blog post.

The company announced the upcoming debut of several Android devices. The first are from INQ, which will launch the Cloud Touch and Cloud Q, smartphones that will feature new Facebook integrations with single sign-on and easy one-touch access to popular Facebook features. The home screen features your News Feed (including your friends' updates, pictures, videos and links) and quick links to Chat, Messages, Places, notifications and more. You can also check in to your favorite shops and businesses with Facebook Places, right from the home screen.

Next, HTC will launch the ChaCha and Salsa phones, which will feature a dedicated Facebook button that provides users with one-touch access to favorite Facebook functions. You can update your status, upload a photo, share a news article and “check in” via Places. Facebook chat, messages and your friends are also integrated, so when you make a phone call, the screen displays your friends' status updates and photos, and even their birthdays.

According to Facebook, in addition to these new phones, the marketplace will see similar deep Facebook integration on dozens of other devices during 2011. Some manufacturers will be highlighting Facebook as a part of their phones' on-screen interfaces, and others will use our brand as an element of the device hardware itself.