Facebook Is Working On New Video Chat Camera

New reports suggest that Facebook is working on a video chat device with a laptop-sized touchscreen, that could be announced as early as next spring’s F8 developer conference.

The Bloomberg report says the video chat device lets people “feel like they’re in the same room”.

Currently in prototype, the new product is apparently already being tested in people’s homes, and includes a wide-angle camera lens, microphones and speakers.

 

The video chat device is joined by another piece of hardware, a smart speaker that would see Facebook compete with the likes of Amazon Echo and Google Home.

Both products come from Facebook’s new experimental Building 8 lab.

At the F8 conference in April, former Google executive Regina Dugan said Building 8’s goal was to “create and ship new, category-defining consumer products that are social first.”

The standalone speaker is expected to sell for less than $100 when it has launched, the video chat speaker “a few hundred dollars”.

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