Facebook reportedly working on video chat device

According to a report from Bloomberg, Facebook is working on video chat device with smart features geared towards the living room. The device will be the first major hardware product from Facebook's experimental building 8 lab, and is in prototype phase, but is already being tested in people's home.

Facebook's video chat device is said to have a laptop sized touch screen measuring between 13 and 15-inches diagonally, wide-angle camera, microphones and speakers all powered by artificial intelligence. The device is expected to run Android operating system.

The device will have a smart camera feature that would allow the device's camera to automatically scan for people in range and lock on them. For example "the camera could zoom onto a painting that a child brought home from school to show to a parent away on a business trip". The video chat device appears to be somewhat similar to Amazon's Echo Show.

Apart from video chat device, Facebook is also working on a smart speaker and plans to sell in the low $100 range, to compete with Amazon Echo and Google Home. The social networking giant is also working on a voice assistant, that would power both the video chat device and smart speaker.

The video chat device is expected to be announced at Facebook's next F8 developer conference.