Sean Percival

From the archive · More essays

First Photo of the Facebook Phone

Los Angeles

You may of read earlier that Facebook is building their own phone (they deny it).

However I would love for them to explain this VERY convincing photo below.

A parody iPhone lock screen mockup titled 'Privacy Update: Facebook Phone would like to: Access your address book, Call you every now and again, Tell advertisers when you are near them and have FB credits available to spend, Watch you pee' with a 'poke to unlock' slider.

They totally ripped off Apple! Not cool!

2026 note: the photo above finally turned up while restoring this post, fifteen years after the original said "ill try to find the photo to include" and then never did. Worth the wait, mostly for "Watch you pee." The rumor itself never quite panned out—Facebook never shipped its own phone—but it got there sideways: the HTC First and "Facebook Home" in 2013 (dead within a year), Portal in 2018, and now Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which are the closest thing to a Facebook phone that's actually stuck. This time it wasn't Apple they ripped off, it was Google Glass, just late enough that nobody remembered why Glass failed the first time.