HTC Buffy name leaked, could Facebook’s new phone

So HTC has made a Facebook phone called the HTC Status (pictured above), but it seems that Facebook wants a phone of its own. It seems that its code name of some of its details have already been leaked, giving us our first glimpse of the upcoming HTC Buffy, a phone that is reportedly named after Joss Whedon’s TV series.

It will be made by HTC and it will run on a heavily customized version of Android. It will be a “deeply social” phone although we’re not sure what that might imply. It will also rely on HTML5 for apps, allowing games from Zynga to be run on the phone as though it were a native app. This would be a pretty risky move by Facebook as no doubt it would upset a lot of people who have begun integrating Facebook into their platforms and phones.

One of these companies would be Apple, with whom Facebook has recently released an iPad Facebook app for. Another could be Microsoft who could be seeing this Facebook phone as a challenge to their Windows Phone platform, and would most probably demand some sort of royalty from Facebook for creating an Android phone.

If you’re looking forward to seeing the HTC Buffy, according to various sources, you should probably not be holding your breath as it may not ship for the next 1.5 years. That seems like a long time and who knows what could happen during that time, but either way we’ll definitely keep an eye out for this.