Rumor: The HTC ChaCha may just be part of SMART’s Netphone project. Again, the Netphone is not a single phone nor is it confined to a single OS. *wink*
We were invited by SMART into HTC’s huge pavilion to sit in a meeting. Lo and behold I was in for the shock of my life when I saw Darren! As in Darren formerly from Apple. It was a happy surprise to see him in Barcelona and now working at HTC (I showed him my HTC Mozart). Anyway, Darren showed us the lineup of HTC for this year — including the HTC ChaCha Facebook phone and the HTC Flyer.

How can HTC have a Facebook phone? The ChaCha’s main feature is a big “F” (for Facebook) button located in the interface. The “F” is contextual. Let’s say you took a photo using the camera. Pressing F uploads the photo to Facebook. If your phone is idle, pressing “F” will update your status (geolocation included). If you’re listening to music on the built in media player, pressing “F” will share that music to your Facebook wall.
The Facebook features are non-exclusive apparently. If a manufacturer wants to do something similar you don’t need to have exclusive API’s from Facebook. It just took time to make on HTC’s end.
The ChaCha is a long-awaited device that HTC needs to break into the youth market. HTC has always been labeled as a high end brand and doesn’t have a strong enough market presence in the Philippines compared to Samsung for instance. This comes as a funny, since HTC has been making phones for other tech companies during their OEM days (i.e. the O2 XDA).
Down there is the Incredible S. Special features: the four shortcut buttons that usually appear below an Android interface also rotate with the G sensor. Check out the second photo.
Darren also showed us the HTC Flyer, their all-metal Tablet that comes with a … stylus?!
Nice sexy back:
The Flyer is honestly “typical HTC” making eye candy gadgets with expensive material. And yes it comes with a stylus. Are we back in 1998?









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