New Facebook-centric Phones Emerge
News of Facebook phones continues to surface, including the awkwardly-named HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa. Both mobile phones offer a dedicated Facebook button, letting the social network’s 500 million-plus members enjoy immediate, one-touch access to snarky status updates, cute pet photos and other pointless productivity sinks.
By using the context-sensitive button, which pulses and lights up when opportunities to share multimedia (like when you’re snapping a picture) are available, anyone can quickly post glamour shots to their wall or smack-talk Steven Tyler. You can also press it while listening to Wiz Khalifa’s latest track to share song and artist info, or use the feature to quickly check in at your favorite dive bar. Dial someone or receive an incoming call and the phones’ screens also display the other party’s most recent status updates and photos. Facebook conversations and messages are also integrated with text and email messages.
Both mobile handsets (not officially branded as “Facebook phones”) will run on the Android 2.3 operating system, will be available via AT&T later in 2011.
The HTC ChaCha comes with a physical QWERTY keyboard, 2.6-inch 480×320 resolution touchscreen and dual cameras, including a 5MP unit with LED flash on its back and front-facing VGA unit for videoconferencing. The HTC Salsa also has dual 5MP and forward-facing VGA cameras for video calling, though it features a 3.4-inch 480×320 display.