Will the killing off of Facebook Places affect the HTC Status, which may be dead too?

As Emil posted on the Friending Facebook ZDNet blog there is a rumor that AT&T may be killing the HTC Status Facebook phone after just a month. You may recall that both myself and my teen daughter took a look at the device and thought it would appeal to Facebook users looking for something more than a feature phone.

AT&T seemed to have it priced right at $50 and it is a rock solid piece of hardware. I found the display to be quite small for the Android OS, but it was a very usable device and I am a bit surprised that it isn't doing better at AT&T. I wonder if Facebook had gotten behind the device a bit more publicly if it would have done better.

The one concern I had about a phone like this with a button dedicated to someone else's service is what would happen when that service changed. We see that Facebook just killed Places and in particular the mobile-only Facebook Places functionality. You will now be able to add your location to anything from anywhere so a smartphone is not required.

The issue with the HTC Status may be that a press and hold of the Facebook button currently checks you in with Facebook Places and if this is killed off then what does this press and hold do on the device? When you tie buttons to other services, then companies like HTC will likely have to issue software updates to fix things when the service changes.