HTC ChaCha Facebook phone now available from Vodafone

Vodafone has announced the availability of the HTC ChaCha, a new Android device with a QWERTY keyboard and a dedicated Facebook button for sharing photos, videos or web pages with friends and family.

The ChaCha has a 2.6in, 320×480 screen with a 5-megapixel rear camera and a 0.3-megapixel front camera. The main camera has auto-focus and face detection, and uses an LED flash for low-light shots.

A dedicated Facebook button lets you instantly share photos, videos or web pages, and HTC’s Sense software will further integrate your Facebook contacts into the phone’s own contacts database. It will also come with a unique Facebook chat widget that will let you view all your online contacts and hold separate conversations with each of them. With Android 2.3 installed, you’ll also have access to a wide variety of apps and games on the Android Market.

Facebook integration goes further than the usual aggregation of contacts into Sense. The ChaCha has a clock widget that uses your friends’ status updates as a ticker, and the Calendar will automatically synchronise with events and birthdays on Facebook. The ChaCha also comes with the usual smartphone features, such as a GPS chip for navigation, 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0. It has an 800MHz processor and 512RAM, but it seems that storage for apps may be limited, with only 512MB of internal storage.

The HTC Cha Cha is available now for free on a special £26-per-month, 24-month contract which includes 750MB of monthly data, 300 minutes and unlimited texts. In addition to your over-the-air data limit, you get 1GB of Wi-Fi data using BT Openzone. It’s also available on 18-month contracts.