Facebook Friending Android – This Time with a Phone?

After making deliberate inroads with Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), it seems that Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and its Android platform will get a relationship update next week at a Facebook corporate event.

Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) invited selected members of the press to an event next Thursday at its company headquarters.

While Facebook already has a dedicated mobile app just for the Android phone, talk of the tech town is about whether this event could reveal a physical Facebook phone using Android operating software, or something more. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has denied on several occasions working on any sort of hardware device, but industry watchers are looking for something in between.

TechCrunch believes the event will take the wrapper off a modified operating system on an HTC phone.

The Wall Street Journal blogs with the same prediction but believes this is the Facebook phone that the Street has been looking for.

Watch it all unfold next week.