Solution In Need Of A Problem is an irregular feature, where a Techcitement writer looks at an announced feature or product and tries to decide what the actual point is.
AT&T showed off some upcoming products Tuesday at a private press event, including the Touchpad 4G and their version of the Sony Xperia Play (aka the PSP phone). They also officially announced the HTC Status.
The Status is the first AT&T phone to have Android 2.3 out of the box, which is nice (and yes, I know you’ll root it anyway). It also has a decent looking keyboard, front and rear facing cameras, and certainly has a nice price point ($49 with two year contract). What I want to talk about is the “hot” feature – the Facebook button.
As you can see in the picture, the HTC Status has an extra, tiny button to take one directly to Facebook. According to the press release, this lets you:
- Post instantly on your wall or a friend’s wall by pressing the Facebook share button from your home screen.
- Take a picture or shoot a video and share it instantly with a press of the Facebook share button. You can also post multiple pictures at one time and label and tag them before posting. Or even post photos automatically as you’re taking them.
- Check in to Facebook Places by pressing and holding the Facebook share button from the home screen.
- Share something cool on the Web with a quick press of the Facebook share button and be the first with the news.
- Let your friends in on the music you love with the push of a button by pressing the Facebook share button to post the song title and other details.
You can already do most this, of course, with the existing Facebook app and widgets. It’s either adding or removing a step, depending on which task you’re doing. I guess that’s neat, if you don’t have the time to switch apps. But the reason I’m dubbing this a Solution In Need Of A Problem is the branding.
We get it. Facebook is cool and all. It’s the largest social network in the world, and even with the sudden meteoric rise in popularity for Google+, it’s not likely to catch up any time soon. Yet we can’t help but wonder what would happen if a phone had launched a few years ago with a MySpace button. How silly would that seem now? I know most people who care about trends trade their phones out pretty darn frequently, but imagine being seen with a passé social network on your phone (and of course, the devs in the room are going to remap that thing anyway).
I like my phones to only have as many buttons as it needs. Adding a button for what should be a software function seems wasteful and a poor trend. Imagine if HTC decides to ink deals with Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+. Suddenly, your bottom row becomes littered with tiny buttons.
If HTC had made a social network button, hooked to an app that cross-posted to assorted networks (ala Pixelpipe, available in the Android Market), then that’d be a selling point. As it stands, it’s like they decided to make a button for ordering burgers on your phone, but only from McDonald’s.
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