Facebook May Be Looking to Crack the Smartphone Game

Proposing an antidote to disposable tech culture.

With its fingers already deep inside more pies than most of us can count, it seems that Facebook‘s Building 8 division is now looking to make the move into its own line of modular smartphones. In a patent published late last week, the social media giant made mention of a “modular electromagnetic device” that would act as a countermeasure to “expensive and wasteful” disposable technologies. While it’s still unclear how far in the development stage this project has gone so far — or whether the patent is a precursor to any concrete hardware venture at all, for that matter — both the phone and speaker market are noted in the paperwork as possible applications for the technology.

We’ll keep you updated on any news of a possible Facebook phone coming your way in the near future, but — while you’re waiting — in other smartphone news here’s what we learned from leaked images of the Nokia 8, set to drop later this month.