The rumours of an official Facebook phone just don’t seem to go away and you can almost hear the angst in Facebook statements to that very effect. The news that INQ is rumoured to be releasing a new phone for February of next year, which is already being billed as the Facebook Phone 2, may quash those rumours or, based on the fact that many believed Facebook were contracting INQ to manufacture the phone for them, may in fact ignite them further.
INQ is well known for producing extremely popular social networking integrated mobile phones. The INQ1 was widely called the Facebook Phone because of how heavily Facebook was integrated into it and Facebook themselves deem it to be the perfect compliment to social networking on their website.
The INQ Chat offered slightly different functionality and the ease with which users could read and submit Tweets and manage their Twitter account meant that this became affectionately known as the Twitter Phone.
Sources have told Pocket Lint and Bloomberg that the phone is likely to arrive at the beginning of next year. Some reports state that the Mobile World Congress is the most likely release.
There’s very little detail on the phone, the price, or even the networks that will offer it. In fact, the only real bit of information is that it will offer users the chance to receive Facebook messages in the same way they do an email.
It has also been confirmed that no carrier has yet been chosen and that all are still in the frame which includes 3 mobile.
We doubt very much that this will put an end to the official Facebook phone rumours but a statement from Facebook which points out that they concentrate on making their service more sociable means that creating their own mobile phone rather than working on integrating Facebook into existing phones would effectively curb this social aspect.
What do you think; will the INQ2 be the unofficial Facebook phone?
