MWC 2011: HTC announces the Salsa and the ChaCha, upgrades three other Android smartphones
With five Android smartphones and a tablet revealed at the Mobile World Congress, the Taiwanese manufacturer has really outdone itself this year.
Of the five smartphones, the Desire S, Wildfire S and Incredible S are upgraded and polished sequels to its erstwhile bestsellers, while the ChaCha and the Salsa are brand new and come with dedicated Facebook buttons for quick access to the social network.
Here’s a quick look at the features of the ChaCha and the Salsa:
HTC ChaCha
- Full physical QWERTY keypad
- 2.6-inch landscape touchscreen display
- 5MP autofocus lens with LED flash (with front-facing VGA)
- Android 2.3 Gingerbread with advanced Facebook and HTC Sense integration
HTC Salsa
- 5MP autofocus lens with LED flash (with front-facing VGA)
- 3.4-inch touchscreen display
- Android 2.3 Gingerbread with advanced Facebook and HTC Sense integration
Both the phones feature tight Facebook integration for easier checking in, uploading pictures and videos and other FB activities.
Coming to the Wildfire S, this iteration sees a slimmed-down form factor measuring just 10.13 cm long and 5.94 cm wide and carries a 3.2-inch touchscreen display with better resolution support (320×480) compared to the previous version, a 600MHz processor with 512MB RAM, and is supposed to feature Android 2.3 Gingerbread with Sense along with a 5MP cam with LED flash and a 2GB microSD preinstalled.
With a 1.2GHz processor, 768MB RAM and Adreno 205 graphics, the Desire S stands second compared to the other two and includes a 5MP shooter which does 720p video, a VGA front-facing camera, a 3.7in WVGA display, WiFi 802.11n support, and upgraded network speeds of 14.4Mbps up and 5.76Mbps down. All this is encased in a slimmer unibody that is made of aluminum.
The final device in the lineup is the Incredible S, arguably the most desirable in the lot with an upgraded 4.0-inch WVGA display but other than that, the device is pretty much similar to the original Incredible but with one unique feature – the icons on the navigation panel rotate when the phone is tilted, a pretty cool feature. The Incredible S features a 1GHz Qualcomm processor with 768MB RAM, an 8-megapixel snapper with LED flash and 720p recording and a secondary 1.3mpx camera for video calling, etc. What dampens the whole deal though is the operating system, which reportedly will be Android 2.2 Froyo, although this might change before the device is let loose this year.
All the five devices will be released in the second quarter of 2011, but are on display in Barcelona right now, so head to HTC’s booth if you are hanging around the MWC.
