Facebook Home to be the OS name of Facebook’s Android phone?

Facebook will reportedly unveil a new Facebook phone later this week, with the device said to be running a new Android user interface / fork which could be called Facebook Home.

What appear to be two distinct sources suggest that Facebook Home is the name the social network is going with. A new 9to5 Google report reveals the Facebook Home name:

Facebook’s invitation to its Android-related media event next week is much less cryptic than it would seem. The invitation reads “Come See Our New Home on Android.” While, based on these words, Facebook seems to be teasing at a new Android-related Facebook experience, our sources say that the tagline reveals the actual product name: “Facebook Home…”

The same product name seems to be confirmed by a new @evleaks tweet:

“The version of Facebook for Android currently on this device needs to be upgraded to support Facebook Home.”

Facebook will make everything official on April 4, and we’ll cover the event thoroughly since it’s Android-related.

A previous report revealed that this supposedly HTC-made Facebook phone will run a forked Android version that will incorporate various Facebook apps and that the handset will look more or less like an iPhone and will offer competitive specs. Facebook and HTCare apparently already in talks with mobile operators to carry the handset, although we’ll have to wait a few more days to find out availability details for the handset.

On the other hand, a recent Wall Street Journal article said that Facebook only wants to take over Android devices by replacing the Home screen with a Facebook-based user interface of its own rather than actually creating a different Android fork like Amazon did with the Kindle Fire tablet family. While some OS modifications would be required to make everything possible, this wouldn’t actually be an Android fork. The name Facebook Home makes a lot of sense combined with this particular story.

Would you replace your current smartphone with one running a Facebook-based Android OS version (whether it’s forked or not)?