TechCrunch broke the news and Business Insider is also reporting that Facebook is working on their own mobile handset. The first report claimed that Facebook’s Joe Hewitt and Eric Tseng (previous Facebook iPhone app developer and previous Senior Product Manager for Android at Google) are heading up the project. When Business Insider chimed in, however, the scope of the project seemed to make more sense than Facebook creating a mobile OS from scratch — they’re rumored to be using Android as the base layer and heavily customizing the UI, applications, and experience. Before you get too excited, it’s being reported the project won’t be ready until late 2011, and even better, Facebook PR has chimed in saying that they are “not building a phone.” If this does pan out to be true, is a Facebook-heavy Android-based handset something that would interest you?
