HTC Facebook phones are here
HTC went ahead and announced two phones with dedicated Facebook orientation and integration. These are the Salsa and ChaCha.
The Salsa features a 3.4-inch touchscreen display of HVGA (480x320) resolution, 5MP auto-focus snapper with LED flash, 600MHz processor and 512MB RAM. It dully covers connectivity with quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and Dual-band 3G.
The ChaCha has a peculiar form factor that HTC haven't tried in a while. It has a 2.6-inch touchscreen display of the same HVGA resolution and a full four-row QWERTY keyboard for texting. It utilizes the same 600MHz processor and the same-looking 5 megapixel camera with LED flash.
The HTC Salsa and ChaCha are running on the latest version of Android - 2.4 Gingerbread. yup, that's right, even Google's Nexus S doesn't have that yet.
The interesting part is a dedicated Facebook button on both devices. It's undeniable that these phones are heavy on social status updates, browsing of friends' profiles, chat and messages and basically everything Facebook-related. The button acts like a second menu button but with Facebook-context added to it. For instance, you can take a photo, hit the Facebook button and directly upload it to your profile.
The HTC Salsa and the HTC ChaCha should be released in Q2 2011.
We have a ninja dispatched to the HTC press conference that's currently under way, so we'll update you with live photos and some hands-on experience.
For now here's an official promo video of the HTC Salsa...
... and for the HTC ChaCha