MWC: HTC Launches Facebook Phones And Android Tablet

Taiwanese phone maker HTC has today unveiled its first tablet computer, the HTC Flyer, along with two new Android smartphones, the ChaCha and the Salsa, with built-in Facebook integration.

HTC showed the new devices at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, along with updates to its Desire, Wildfire and Incredible ranges. All of the devices run the latest version of Google’s Android operating system.

“We believe customers want choice; one size does not fit all,” said Philip Blair, product director at HTC Europe.

Flyer – a 7in Android tablet

The Flyer is a 7-inch tablet with an aluminium body running a 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, and has both touch and pen capabilities. It has both rear and front-facing cameras, 5 Megapixels and 1.3 Megapixels respectively, with 32GB of internal storage, 1GB of RAM. The device weighs in at 420g.

The Flyer will initially run Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) when it launches in Q2 2011, but HTC intends to upgrade to Android Honeycomb 3.0, optimised for tablets, once the OS build is released.

Flyer offers 3D graphics, with a specially-designed version of HTC Sense, incorporating HTC Watch, a video streaming service, and a cloud-based mobile gaming service powered by OnLive. There is also a slew of business features, such as TimeMark for notetaking and audio recording, making it an attractive option for the enterprise market.

The company said the Flyer would sell for a UK price ‘equivalent’ to that of other tablets on the market.

Analysts welcomed the tablet but were not overwhelmed by aspects like the inclusion of a stylus. “HTC’s first tablet – the Android-powered HTC Flyer – is a cautious first move by the company into the space and not one that it expects to compete on a volume basis with its smartphones,” said Tony Cripps, principal analyst at Ovum. “Nonetheless, the Flyer is noteworthy in bringing some innovation – and even some retro features – to the space.”

“The HTC Watch video download and instant playback service will live or die depending on the size and breadth of the content catalog HTC is able to build for it,” said Cripps. The Flyer’s ‘HTC Scribe’ pen-based input option is a first on non-Windows tablets, he said, and “may seem anachronistic given the current obsession with multi-touch, but may well end up being widely copied if its utility can be adequately demonstrated.”

The long-awaited Facebook phones

Meanwhile, HTC also unveiled the ChaCha and the Salsa smartphones, which both include a dedicated Facebook button built onto the body of the device for instant access to the social network.

The ChaCha has a full qwerty keypad for speedy texting and instant messaging, as well as a 2.6-inch touchscreen, 600MHz processor and 5 Megapixel camera. It also offers video and photo alerts, as well as the ability to update the home screen with real-time Facebook status messages from friends.

Meanwhile the Salsa has a 3.4-inch touchscreen, making it slightly larger than the Wildfire. It too offers deep Facebook integration, with a ‘friend channel widget’ that means the user only sees updates from their favorite people.

“This deeper level of integration could make the mobile experience of Facebook more compelling than other mobile versions of the application and, potentially, even more so than the full web version,” said Ovum analyst Nick Dillon. “It’s hard to imagine Google being overly happy that HTC is using its Android platform to provide an improved experience and greater access to arguably its biggest rival.”

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg appeared in a video shown at the press conference in Barcelona, in which he said people could expect to see “dozens” of Facebook phones this year.

Facebook had explicitly denied that it was working on a phone operating system equivalent to Google’s Android, but it seems there will be plenty of Android-based phones with heavy Facebook integration. Last week saw the arrival of the INQ Cloud Touch and Cloud Q phones which use Facebook for as many normal phone features as possible.