Have you been itching to give Facebook Home a try? Now you can, as long as you currently have one of the supported HTC or Samsung handsets, or are willing to shell out $99 for the HTC First, which you can buy from AT&T as of Friday.
For HTC first buyers, Facebook Home is going to come pre-installed, so to get started you only need to sign into your Facebook account. For everyone else, you'll have a few hoops to jump through before you'll be able to surf through your friend's photos using Facebook's Cover Feed, or move chat heads around.
I just installed Facebook Home on the HTC One X+ to see how the experience works.
Basic Requirements
While you can use chat heads with a number of Android phones, to use Facebook Home you'll need to be running Android 4.0 or above on either the HTC One X or One X+, Samsung's Galaxy S III, or the Galaxy Note II. Home will also be supported on the HTC One and Galaxy S 4, both of which will be for sale soon.
For basic Home functionality, you'll just need the latest version of Facebook installed on your phone, as well as the Facebook Home app, which arrived in Google Play on Friday.
If you want to use chat heads, the floating icons with your friend's faces, you'll also need to have Facebook Messenger installed on your device.
Get Connected
Once you've downloaded or updated all the apps, you'll be prompted to sign in to Facebook, if you haven't already.
Since Facebook Home is technically an Android launcher, you'll be prompted to choose from either your phone's native launcher or any other launchers you have installed, including Facebook Home, when your smartphone boots up. To get going with Facebook Home, simply choose it from the options.
Once you've made your selection, Facebook Home is installed, and you're ready to play.
Basic Commands
Your profile picture will appear on the bottom of the screen. When locked, slide your face up to bring up your app menu, to the left for Facebook Messenger, or to the right to bring up the last app you were using.
Navigating through Facebook Home is fairly intuitive and easy to understand. To operate the launcher you just need to know a few simple steps:
Cover Feed: Cover Feed will automatically show a rotating display of all of your friends' status messages and posts. Posts that don't include a photo, such as your standard status message, will pull your friend's Cover Photo from Facebook to use as the background. You can flip through posts by swiping on the screen from right to left.
Likes and Comments: A single tap on a Cover Feed photo will bring up a small toolbar at the bottom of the image. On the far right you'll see the number of likes and comments a post has, on the left a chat bubble you can tap to add your own two-cents into the conversation, or a thumbs up icon to give the item a like.
Notifications: When you're not interacting with Facebook Home, notifications will appear in the center of the screen. Tap them to open them, or swipe them to remove.
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Likes can also be done by double tapping on the center of the image. Once you double tap, the phone will make a popping noise, and a large thumbs up animation will briefly show up on the screen, letting you know your like was successful.
With Facebook Home your app menu also has a new Status, Photo, and Check-In option at the top, making it easy to post messages to Facebook on the fly while you're out an about.
Chat Heads
Chat heads are actually a function of Facebook Messenger, not necessarily Facebook Home. So, even if you aren't rocking one of the supported Facebook Home smartphones, you can still give them a try.
As you receive messages from friends, their faces will appear on the screen in the form of a small bubble. Tapping on an head will open a chat window where you can have a conversation. If a few friends have messaged you, you'll be able to toggle between them.
If you're not interested in chatting with your friend right now, you can drag their face to the bottom of the screen to discard the message.
Customizable
Don't like the sound your phone makes when you like something in Cover Feed? Think chat heads are creepy? Facebook has offered a few ways to customize the experience for your own personal liking. Tap the bottom of the screen (or the Android settings button) on your phone and select Home Settings to adjust things the way you'd like.
Have any of you given Facebook Home a try yet? Let us know what you think about the app in the comments.
HTC First and Facebook Home Review
Lead image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News/Getty Images; Screenshots courtesy of Facebook
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