Facebook Home and the HTC First (the very first Android smartphone to pre-ship with Facebook Home) will be available on April 12th. For those that can’t wait that long to get their hands on Facebook’s new Android overlay, Modaco has actually discovered a way to install it on certain Android handsets ahead of time.
Unfortunately the build itself is a pre-release build from the HTC First ROM and seems to be rather buggy. In fact, apparently the Chat Heads do not function correctly and there is minor graphical glitches. The bulk of the ROM still works however, and will satisfy your craving for Facebook Home until it is officially released on April 12th.
As long as you have an Android handset that does not have a resolution higher than 1280×768 and you can completely uninstall your existing Facebook app, you will be able to easily install this pre-release of Facebook Home. Even if you do have Facebook pre-installed, there is a workaround, but it is more complicated.
In order to get Facebook Home working on your supported Android handset you will need to download three APK files that include the main Katana Facebook app, the now-integrated-with-your-SMS Orca Messenger app and the Home Launcher Shell app. You can download all three of these files here.
Once you download the leaked Facebook Home APKs you will simply need to install them to your Android handset at your own risk. Those with Facebook pre-installed will need to follow these steps first before just installing the three leaked APKs.
- Find the location of Facebook in your system partition (e.g. /system/app/Facebook.apk or perhaps /system/app/Facebook_Client.apk)
- Delete said file (after backing it up!)
- Reboot device
- Install Facebook from the Play Store then uninstall it
- Install above APKs
Let us know if you were able to install Facebook Home on your Android device in the comments section.
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