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First Two 'Facebook Phones' Announced, Expect Plenty More

by Terrence O'Brien on February 15, 2011 at 10:00 AM

HTC Facbeook Phones
So all those rumors about a Facebook phone turned out to be wrong. There are a ton of Facebook phones in the pipeline! Mark Zuckerberg popped up in a pre-recorded (and extraordinarily creepy) video at HTC's press event at Mobile World Congress yesterday, to announce that his company had worked closely with the Android wizards at HTC to tightly integrate Facebook with Sense (HTC's custom Android skin). The first two devices to market will be the HTC Salsa and HTC ChaCha, decidedly low-end devices running Gingerbread on top of bargain hardware. Both phones pack 512MB of RAM and 600Mhz, single-core processors -- the Atrix 4G these are not. The ChaCha features a 2.6-inch, 480x320 screen above a full QWERTY keyboard, while the Salsa keeps the lowly 480x320 resolution, but ditches the keyboard in favor of a 3.4-inch touch panel. At the bottom of both devices, though, you'll find a context-sensitive Facebook button for quickly sharing what your doing.

The level of integration between Facebook and Sense on the devices is deep -- perhaps too deep. Any time you place a call to or receive a call from a Facebook friend, the screen will display their latest photos and status updates, and alert you if their birthday is approaching. (OK, maybe that last one is useful.) Facebook chats and messages even get lumped in with your text messages and e-mail. Europe and Asia will get the first pair of Facebook phones during the second quarter of 2011, while American customers will have to wait until some point "later this year" for AT&T and HTC to bring the devices to market. Pricing wasn't announced, but we expect these handsets to be priced to move. $50 with a 2-year contract is probably a safe bet.

Tags: android, cellphones, facebook, facebook phone, FacebookPhone, htc, htc chacha, htc salsa, htc sense, HtcChacha, HtcSalsa, HtcSense, top

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