HTC’s “Facebook phones”

HTC has worked closely with Facebook over a period of years to develop the phones, that offer a much greater degree of social integration than any previous phones (you’ll never miss your mum’s birthday again!).

Head of Mobile Business for Facebook, Mr Henri Moissinac said, “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.”

With small businesses in the USA rapidly moving onto Facebook as a low-cost, easy way to promote their product or service, the new Facebook phones promise to make life even easier. The HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa feature a dedicated Facebook® button for one-touch access to the key functions of the Facebook service that are integrated throughout the HTC Sense experience.

Details on the Salsa, which comes with a 3.4-inch display, and its little brother, the 2.6-inch ChaCha, are still a little sketchy; indeed, reporters and bloggers at HTC's press conference at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona could only gaze at the two handsets through a pane of protective glass.

salsa

The larger HTC Salsa looks to be a touchscreen-only handset, with a decent-sized 3.4-inch, 480-by-320-pixel display, while the smaller ChaCha is a BlackBerry-style device with a 2.6-inch screen, also 480 by 320, plus a physical QWERTY keypad.

Both phones come with five-megapixel cameras in back and VGA-quality front-facing cameras for video chat.

chacha

All very nice, but let's get to the good stuff—namely, the little blue Facebook button that sits at the bottom of each phone.

My first thought was that the button would do little more than launch the mobile Facebook app—not very exciting. But apparently, there's more to it.

As described by Phonescoop, the button acts more as a content sharer than a mere Facebook launcher; for example, if you stumble upon a webpage, a photo, or a song that you want to share with your Facebook pals, you can post it instantly (though, I'd hope, not before being prompted by a confirmation dialog) by pressing the Facebook button.

fb button

And here's another interesting tidbit, this time from Android Central: whenever you're viewing, watching, or listening to content you can share on Facebook, the Facebook button will glow.

So, are these the official "Facebook phones" we've been hearing about? No, insists Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who  told the assembled press at HTC's press conference that rather than a single "Facebook phone," there will be "dozens" of Android handsets featuring deep Facebook integration.