HTC announced at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona that it will be launching two Android smartphones HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa that are completely social. Both will have a dedicated Facebook button to enable one touch access to Facebook service.
HTC says that the Facebook button on these smartphones is context-aware and will pulse a light whenever it shares content or updates through Facebook. Just pressing the button, one can update his/her status, upload a photo, share a Website, ‘check in’ to a location and more. Also one can take take a picture and upload it instantly to Facebook.
Both the smartphones HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa are powered by the latest version of Android Gingerbread 2.3.3, the latest version, and the latest iteration of HTC Sense. HTC ChaCha has a 2.6-inch, 480 x 320 resolution touch screen, physical QWERTY keyboard with a tilt design and features dual cameras, a 5-megapixel color camera with auto focus and LED flash and a VGA front-facing camera for video chat and high definition pictures. HTC Salsa boasts of 3.4-inch, 480 x 320 resolution touch display and 5-megapixel camera that can capture high-resolution photos or video and a VGA camera for face-to-face conversation.
HTC says that social aspect is completely integrated in both the smartphones and Facebook messages and conversations appear within the text and email inboxes. In addition,
when you make a phone call, the dialer screen displays your friend’s latest status and photos, and even tells you if their birthday is approaching. The same updates are also displayed when you receive a call from a Facebook friend. You can also use your phone’s existing contacts to help you connect with them on Facebook or personalize your handset further with a number of new, Facebook-branded widgets.
Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corporation, said
HTC has always understood that different people want different things and the new HTC ChaCha and Salsa offer special new ways to experience Facebook on a mobile device. With more than 500 million active users worldwide, Facebook has become synonymous with the social web and we wanted to create the ultimate socially connected phones with mass market appeal.
Henri Moissinac, Head of Mobile Business for Facebook said
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. 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 HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa smartphones will be available to European and Asian customers first during the second quarter of this year. They will be available in the United States with AT&T later this year.
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