Having been denied by Mark Zuckerberg that Facebook is secretly or otherwise working on a smartphone, rumors of the mysterious device are again doing the rounds. This time is in connection with a phone that HTC may be developing phone with the code name ‘HTC Opera UL’ according to Pocket-Lint tech blog via a source in Taiwan where HTC is based. There have been previous attempts by HTC to deeply integrate Facebook in its phones with the HTC Cha-Cha and HTC Salsa, but those two failed to make a big impression on buyers.

Back on September 11th at the TechCrunch Disrupt event Mark Zuckerberg said of the rumor “It doesn’t move the needle for us. We want to build a system that’s deeply integrated into every platform people use.” There are leaked benchmark graphics point towards a 1.4GHz dual-core processor, with an Adreno 305 GPU, a 1280 x 720 display and running a  Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean, but most likely a modified Android, and not one that is blessed by Google; much in the same way that Amazon has done with the Kindle line of devices.

Past rumors have suggested a Facebook smartphone to be released in 2013. There is little to no real appeal of smartphone of this nature, when all the other devices are already heavily integrating Facebook, plus many other social network.