Facebook may yet release a smartphone of its own, with the latest rumours pointing to an HTC-made handset codenamed Buffy.

The handset is supposedly being built on Android, but a heavily customised version that Facebook is fiddling with in order to integrate its many and varied services into the handset from the off, just as Buffy Summers integrated seamlessly with Mr Pointy and her crucifix after a spot of training.

We imagine this means the handset will 'run' Facebook rather than requiring an app to take you into the network – rather like the which is based on Android but keeps you in a fairly walled Kindle-infested garden.

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Rather than the slowly-dying-as-though-it-accidentally-stumbled-into-the-sunlight , the Buffy handset will apparently take HTML5 as its core app platform.

According to , which broke the story, Facebook has only recently decided to go with HTC as its hardware partner, after what we can only assume was a fist-fight to the death between it and Samsung.

Because Facebook and HTC have only just agreed to this clandestine union, we're more likely to see the Facebook phone land at Mobile World Congress 2013 than the 2012 show, with the hardware likely to be 12 to 18 months off.

We like this rumour and having experimented with the and it wouldn't exactly be a shocker if it turned out that Facebook plans to launch its own phone.

We just hope that this is the beginning of a mass Buffy-inspired codenaming strategy from the two companies: HTC Giles, HTC Willow, HTC Xander – beautiful.

As Android continues to grow in popularity, so does the problem of aggressive malware code. Expert reports are claiming that the growth of this malware is a staggering 472 percent since July.

spoke with Tim Armstrong of Kaspersky Lab and he said “Android malware is growing at an exponential rate, but until a large and significant user base is affected by malware, I fear we won’t see any major changes in user behavior.”

This point was reiterated by Chester Wisniewski of Sophos who said “Most consumers don’t care until they get their first $1,000 phone bill because their pirated Angry Birds has been calling Estonia all month.”

The source of the report comes from who say that malware has increased by 472 percent in just four months since July.