The HTC Salsa is the second of two Facebook-enabled smartphones announced at Mobile World Congress 2011 last week. The Salsa is the slightly better-specced bigger sibling of the HTC ChaCha.
Unlike the ChaCha, the Salsa doesn’t offer a QWERTY keyboard, it’s purely a touchscreen phone. That’s a 3.4 inch touchscreen, offering 480 x 320 resolution. The Salsa runs on the Android Gingerbread operating system, has and both front- and rear-facing cameras.
And of course just like the ChaCha, the Salsa has a Facebook button at the bottom of the phone, with in-built Facebook widgets, contextual to the particular part of the phone’s menu that you are in. Such as:
a clock with a Facebook stream of updates as a ticker, and a Calendar widget so you never miss your friends’ birthdays and events. You can also follow your special favorites and all their news with the Friend Stream widget.
HTC Salsa specifications
- Operating system: Android Gingerbread (v2.3.3)
- Screen: 3.4-inch touch screen with 480 x 320 resolution
- Network: HSPA/WCDMA: Europe/Asia: 900/2100 MHz; Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
- CPU: 600 MHz
- Memory: 512MB ROM, 512MB RAM
- Wi-Fi: IEEE 802.11b/g/n
- Connections: 3.5 mm stereo audio jack, standard micro-USB (5-pin micro-USB 2.0)
- Battery: 1520 mAh rechargeable Lithium-ion
- Talk time: WCDMA up to 474 minutes, GSM up to 540 minutes
- Standby time: WCDMA up to 530 hours, GSM up to 445 hours
- Camera: 5 megapixel color camera with auto focus and flash; VGA front camera
- Sensors: G-Sensor, digital compass, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor
- Internal GPS antenna
- Audio formats: Playback:.aac, .amr, .ogg, .mid, .mp3, .wav, .wma (Windows Media Audio 9); Recording:.amr
- Video formats: Playback: .3gp, .3g2, .mp4, .wmv (Windows Media Video 9), .avi (MP4 ASP and MP3), .xvid (MP4 ASP and MP3); Recording:.3gp
- Dimensions: 109.1 x 58.9 x 12.3 mm (H x W x D)
- Weight: 120 grams (including battery)
HTC Salsa release date and price
The HTC Salsa goes on sale on July 6, through Vodafone.
It’s available for:
- $0 upfront on the $29 Cap over 24 months (total minimum cost: $696)
- $0 upfront on the $45 Infinite over 24 months (total minimum cost: $1,080)