The Era Of The Facebook Phones Is About To Begin

By Author: RegSpencer
Total Articles: 59
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Facebook has become such a big phenomenon that it is now commonplace to find Facebook support on a smartphone in one form or another. In fact, you will probably be hard pushed to find a modern mobile phone that doesn't feature Facebook integration or at least some sort of Facebook app allowing you to quickly access the website. With more than 50% of Facebook status updates now being made from a phone it is no surprise to see phone manufacturers starting to compete for better Facebook support on their devices.

The start of 2011 has seen the introduction of the first four 'Facebook Phones', with many more promised in the coming months and years. These phones will take Facebook support to a whole new level and be the perfect phones of choice for people who find it difficult to keep away from the social network for any extended period of time. HTC and INQ are the two companies spearheading this new mobile phone niche and each has produced two handsets to get the ball rolling. While both companies have produced one full touchscreen device and one touch sensitive QWERTY messaging device, they have taken different approaches ...
... in the way that they have implemented support for the social network.

The HTC Chacha and Salsa have opted for dedicated Facebook buttons, which allow users quick access to share their activities with online chums. The button will glow when a shareable activity is being engaged in, and all the user needs to do is tap it to get it online. This could be when browsing a website, listening to music or after taking a photo with the phone's camera making it now easier than ever to record your photographic memories.

The HTC phones also feature more support for feeds from the social network to be displayed on the homescreen, with support for the Social Graph API so that these updates are regarding the people you interact with the most. The HTC phones also come with excellent support for Facebook Chat.

The other company keen to get into the FB Phone phenomenon is INQ, a relatively small company who were actually one of the first to pioneer social networking on mobile phones. Although they do not come with dedicated FB buttons (instead coming with dedicated Spotify buttons) from a quick glance you can see that Facebook is much more heavily integrated with the interface of these phones. INQ have designed their own Android UI that has FB as its central theme, with notifications, events and places displayed prominently on the homescreen. Like the HTC phones the INQ Cloud Touch and INQ Cloud Q come with support for Social Graph and FB Chat.

All four handsets run on Google Android with the HTC Salsa and INQ Cloud Touch providing a full touchscreen design and the HTC Chacha and INQ Cloud Q offering a BlackBerry style QWERTY design that will be more suitable for people who prefer some sort of physical contact for typing. The two companies have taken a different approach to integrating FB, with HTC providing quicker access through a dedicated button and INQ weaving the social network into every nook and cranny of their phone interface.

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