Facebook is planning to make its first foray into selling its own consumer hardware outside of Oculus, as it is working on launching the first device to come out of Facebook’s skunkworks hardware lab, which is called Building 8. According to Cheddar report, next week, Facebook will finally announce the launch of its long-rumored smart home device, which is called the ‘Portal‘, a new intelligent device that will allow users to speak to Facebook within their homes. Although there are no product’s visuals officially yet, but it is reported that the Facebook’s Portal device will be similar to the Amazon’s Echo Show smart home device with some intelligent and effective social features.  Facebook’s Portal device also will be available in two screen sizes. The larger one would be priced around $400, while the smaller Portal device would be priced around $300, As reported by Cheddar’s resources through personnel familiar with the matter.

On the other hand, it should be kept in mind that the Facebook’s Portal device was originally planned to be announced at the Facebook annual F8 developer conference in May of this year. But Facebook delayed the announcement of the new portal smart home device because of the company’s recent scandals -specially the Cambridge Analytica data breach-.

Facebook’s Portal device will introduce an effective and enjoyable set of features and options, such as:

• The Device will provide a privacy shutter which is used to cover the device’s wide-angle video camera, which uses artificial intelligence to recognize people in the frame and follow them as they move throughout a room, as reported by Cheddar.
• Additionally, Facebook’s Portal device will feature integration with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, that enables users to:

• Play music
• Watch videos
• See cooking recipes
• Get news briefs

• It will come with a large touchscreen, a wide-angle camera, microphones, and speakers.
• Portal will likely be used for outside entertainment on-demand services like Spotify and Netflix, and stream them into users’ home entertainment devices.

Cheddar also points out that Facebook’s portal had been tested by the Facebook employees for months in their homes before offering the new Portal device to major retailers. It also mentions that a Facebook spokesperson refused to add any comment on this reported news. He just says that “The company doesn’t comment on rumor and speculation.”