smartphones

Facebook Phone, we hardly knew ye. After being on the market in the United States for just 31 days, AT&T is pulling the plug on the first smartphone to feature Facebook's Android UI overlay of apps known as Facebook Home. Among the litany of problems Home had, there was:

• The Cover Feed. When you log into the phone's homescreen, you're already signed into Facebook, and you already have notifications popping up on the main page. Congratulations! You get to see all the useless crap your sort-of acquaintances post whether you like it or not! Huzzah!

• Those crappy ads you see on the right side of your news feed. Did we mention those would also be plastered onto the homescreen? So instead of seeing all your favorite apps, you'd see a big fat ad for ChristianMingle. Sweet!

• No privacy controls. You'd think a company with a privacy track record as piss-poor as Facebook's would make assuaging fears of privacy invasion a top priority with their phone release. Nope. Not a word from Zuckerberg & Co. on app permissions, possible geolocation, data logging, browsing habits, etc. For all intents and purposes, you could be carrying around a court-mandated ankle bracelet in your pocket, and you wouldn't even know it.

Better luck next time, Zuck... y'know, if there even is a next time...

Also it totally is a coincidence that those Hitachi massager wands are shaped that way. Yep, a total coincidence...