subject: HTC Salsa Ushers in the New Wave of Facebook Phones [print this page] HTC Salsa Ushers in the New Wave of Facebook Phones
Along with the HTC Chacha and the INQ Cloud Touch and Cloud Q, the HTC Salsa is one of the first phones of what looks to be a new market craze: Facebook phones. Facebook support has been available on most smartphones for some time now, with varying degrees of support and integration, but now phone manufacturers are seeing a real market for phones designed specifically with Facebook use in mind. Such is the extent of the popularity of the social network, and the extent to which people interact with it from their phones.
What marks the HTC Salsa out in this respect, and also applies to its sibling the HTC Chacha, is the inclusion of a dedicated Facebook button on the phone's body. This has a number of applications and can be used in a variety of ways, the most basic is simply by loading the Facebook app once it is pressed. Another example in which it can be used is that it can be pressed shortly after taking a picture on the phones camera, and you will be provided with the ability to quickly and easily upload the image to your Facebook profile.
The 5 megapixel camera comes with an LED flash as well as features such as geo-tagging and face detection. With microSD cards you can have over 32GB of storage space to hold pictures and videos captured on the camera and a secondary VGA camera is available for video calling.
With a phone that places so much emphasis on Facebook you would expect it to have other great messaging options on offer, and the HTC Salsa most certainly does. Threaded SMS is available, as well as MMS, email and instant messaging services like Google Talk. As well as this there is great integration for Facebook and other social networks like Twitter. The HTC Salsa stands out as one of the few phones coming with excellent support for Facebook Chat.
The HTC Salsa runs on Google Android 2.4 Gingerbread and comes with HTC's famous Sense UI. An accelerometer is included which allows you to auto rotate the interface of the 3.4" capacitive touchscreen. There are a great many connectivity options on offer with the HTC Salsa including HSDPA 3G and Wi-Fi. These all make it fit for purpose as a Facebook dedicated phone as well as an excellent messaging phone in general.
While the INQ Facebook handsets arguably offer more Facebook integration the HTC Salsa will no doubt generate a lot of interest from Facebook fanatics. Its ability to allow you to easily connect to Facebook and more easily share photos and videos on the service will make it a highly desirable phone for those who spend a lot of time tagging photos. As well as its Facebook and messaging features the HTC Salsa comes with a great range of entertainment options on offer with excellent music and video support available. The HTC Salsa also comes with YouTube support out of the box and also comes with excellent Picasa integration as well.
