British newspaper reports that HTC is building two Facebook phones to be revealed at MWC

Despite a consistent denial from Facebook, the daily British business newspaper City A.M. is reporting that HTC has manufactured two handsets branded with the Facebook name. The paper has previously  been correct with some details of the Nexus S before they were made public, so City A.M. does have a good track record in these matters. And last year, we reported that a Facebook phone was possibly in the works.

According to the new report, the Facebook phones run on a "tweaked" version of Android that supports all of the social website's features like writing and reading messages, chatting, and calling your friends. The handsets will have the Facebook logo and colors and one model will be touch only while the other will sport a physical QWERTY keyboard.

The story is based on tips from unnamed sources who claim that a pair of Facebook executives have been working on the project. The duo, Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos, worked on the Firefox browser and the Google Chrome browser respectively. And a hint has come from Facebook CTO Bret Taylor who recently was quoted as saying to an audience of developers, that "Mobile is our primary focus for our platform this year." Of course, the executive could simply be referring to the Facebook app used on various cellphone operating systems.

Now, it is just a matter of waiting for the MWC next month to see if City A.M.'s sources trump Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's denials.

source: AndroidandMe