HTC has confirmed that it had phones with Facebook integration by launching the Salsa and the ChaCha Android phones at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Spain.
Both phones have instant access to Facebook via the button. Both HTC and Facebook admitted they had cooperated closely in the development of the devices.
Salsa has a 3.4-inch touchscreen while ChaCha comes with a keyboard. Both phones have 5mp cameras in back and VGA-quality front cameras for video conferencing.
HTC hopes the Facebook integration will appeal to new generation consumers. The Facebook button will allow instant sharing of photographs or music from the phone, claims HTC. Other features include display of status updates and information a caller is a user’s Facebook friend.
HTC CEO Peter Chou said that the phone maker wanted to create socially connected phones with mass market appeal.
Facebook’s head of mobile business Henri Moissinac said the social networking company worked closely with HTC for several years on bringing Facebook to their devices and HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa are the next stage.
But Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg insists these are not official Facebook phones. He said that rather than a single "Facebook phone," there will be "dozens" of Android handsets featuring deep Facebook integration.
In all, HTC unveiled six phones at the show, five of which are smartphones. It introduced its first tablet computer with a separate stylus, the 7-inch Flyer and new versions of its models Desire, Wildfire and Incredible.
All six new devices will run Google’s Android software and use Qualcomm’s chipsets.
They will be available in the UK in the second quarter of 2011.
