Rumours of a Facebook phone have been rampant for the past couple of years, but now it appears the social networking outfit is really working on a smartphone with Taiwanese phone maker HTC.

According to allthingsd.com, the new phone will rely heavily on HTML5 and it is said to be codenamed Buffy of all things. However, Facebook is reportedly also looking into a partnership with Samsung, so project Buffy could also be handled by the Korean consumer electronics giant.

Facebook CTO Bret Taylor is said to be heading the vampire-slayer-phone project and the phone itself probably won’t show up anytime soon, if ever. It is unclear what level of Facebook integration to expect from the rumoured phone, but in all likelihood we are not just talking about a dedicated hardware button and a preinstalled Facebook app.

More here.