HTC ChaCha and Salsa Facebook Phones Announced

HTC has announced several new smartphones today. The first two are the HTC ChaCha and the HTC Salsa.

HTC has designed this pair of smartphones to function as “Facebook phones” in that the HTC Sense UI designed for these devices, heavily integrates Facebook connectivity.

Both phones feature a dedicated Facebook button allowing one-touch access to the social network. The Sense UI also integrates Facebook through out the functions of both smartphones.

“We have worked closely with HTC for several years on bringing Facebook to their devices and HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa are the next stage,” said Henri Moissinac, Head of Mobile Business for Facebook. “HTC has brought Facebook to these two new devices in an innovative way enabling people to connect and share easily whenever they want, wherever they are.”

The system works by being context-aware. When an opportunity to share something arises, such as you take a picture, listen to a song or do whatever else on the phone, the phone has a pulsing light that allows you to push the button and let Facebook, ie: your friends, know what’s happening.

The press release comments that each of the pair of smartphones runs the latest Android 2.4 operating system which is a step up from Android 2.3 in that it integrates some of Android 3.0 Honeycomb in to the back end. However, the new Android 2.4 OS will not look any different to the user as it’s all just stuff for developers that has changed.

As for technical specs on the pair of phones, the ChaCha has a 2.6 inch screen that can show 480 x 320 pixels. A 5 megapixel camera is found on the back that has auto-focus and is accompanied by an LED flash. A front facing VGA camera is also included. The layout is similar to the E Series Nokia smartphones in that it has a small QWERTY keyboard below the screen (pictured above).

The HTC Salsa has a larger 3.4 inch screen with the exact same resolution of 480 x 320 pixels. The screen is touch screen and the device has two cameras with the one on the back being 5 megapixels and the one on the front being VGA for face to face calls.

Expect each device to start shipping in Q2 of this year although exact dates and pricing is not known at the moment.

Comments

  1. facebookguru says

    Well it looks like that HTC wants its customer to use their smartphone while dancing or may be feel easy to use them like dancing chacha and salsa,how they enjoyed it.

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