Facebook addicts will be able to get their fix a whole lot quicker and more easily courtesy of Vodafone and HTC who today announced the Salsa and the ChaCha, available in stores Wednesday 6 July.
The HTC Salsa has a 3.4″ 480×320 resolution screen and a body reminiscent of the Hero and the Legend with a slight curve at the bottom. The HTC ChaCha more closely resembles a blackberry or the Nokia e71 with a full qwerty keyboard under a 2.6″ screen, also with a 480×320 resolution. Both have a solid high quality feel which we have come to expect from HTC phones.
The most exciting feature of these two phones, which well and truly makes them ‘Facebook phones’, is the dedicated Facebook button on the front. The Facebook button not only gives you instant access to Facebook, but also pulses when you can share content from your phone. When you’re listening to a song, browsing a web page or taking a photo for example, you can share that content directly to your Facebook profile with the touch of a button. A long press of the Facebook button also gives you direct access to Facebook places for a quick and easy check-in. The Salsa has a dedicated camera button on the side, rare in android phones, and the ChaCha allows you to set up any of the keys on the qwerty keyboard as shortcuts, very handy.
Each phone is powered by an 800MHz single core processor and 512mb ram, which won’t top any benchmark competitions but is very capable of powering the Android 2.3 and HTC Sense software. HTC Sense has also been extensively customised for Facebook integration and to ensure great performance given the hardware specs. The HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa will be exclusive to Vodafone and $0 on the $29 cap over 24 months or $0 on the $45 Infinite plan from 6 July.
