More and more of you are spending your life on Facebook so we set Tom Bailey from Electric Pig the task of finding out whether the HTC ChaCha was the perfect phone for the Facebook- lover.
You can read more of Tom’s reviews over on Electric Pig.
Are you a Facebook addict? Well, you’re not alone. Over 500 million of us use Facebook – 200 million of which check their profile on a smartphone. What’s more, a quarter of those aged 18-24 check their Facebook page before they even get out of bed! Although to be fair, that could just point to a lot of epic lie-ins…
With those stats in mind, HTC has come us with a new way to feed our addiction – the Cha Cha smartphone, complete with bright blue, pulsating ‘F’ button Facebook shortcut. But does it really add anything to the mobile Facebook experience? After all, why create a shortcut when there are already so many ways to get to Facebook any phone?
You can download Facebook apps for every smartphone platform. You can log in to the social network’s mobile site through any web browser – and there’s even a version designed specifically for touchscreen phones.
But having played with the HTC Cha Cha this week, we soon discovered that the Facebook key isn’t really about saving time – it’s about sharing. Facebook isn’t a mere address book, it’s a way to share almost anything with those you love. And the ChaCha does that to perfection.
Whenever you’re on a website you want to show others, hitting the Facebook button attaches the page as a link and lets you write a brief intro. Whenever you take a photo with the HTC ChaCha, tap the ‘F’ to upload it and tag your friends.
If you’re listening to a song you like, you can use it to share an Amazon link, so your mate can download it and check it out. It even works with videos you’ve just filmed – and unlimited data on Three’s One Plan means you only need worry about how many Likes your clip gets, not 3G uploading limits.
Whenever it glows, you can share. And whenever it doesn’t, you can still share. Give it a tap and start penning your latest update via the QWERTY keyboard, which, to coin a phrase, would make any BlackBerry fan ‘well jel’.
Of course Facebook lets you do all of this on any screen, but it’s the focus on sharing, rather than merely glimpsing what everyone else is saying, that’s the HTC ChaCha killer feature.
Why stand back and observe just because you’re using Facebook on a small screen? Why not interact? And why not have a goddamn lie-in while you’re at it? The ‘F’ button is calling you…
