HTC ChaCha - Review

“The ChaCha brings all of your social media accounts together in one rolling widget - you'll get all your Facebook, Twitter or Flickr updates bundled together”

HTC ChaCha - Social Butterfly

The HTC ChaCha is designed to make it as easy as possible to update your Facebook, post on walls and tag your friends - all at the touch of one dedicated blue button.

So although this might not be the Facebook phone it’s certainly pretty close, giving you everything you need for the ultimate social network experience.

With its Qwerty keyboard and landscape screen, the ChaCha looks very much like a BlackBerry, phone of choice for many teenagers of the Facebook generation. But unlike some of the latest BlackBerry phones, the HTC ChaCha is available on pay-as-you-go from around £150.

The ChaCha weighs in at 124g, which is slightly lighter than the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and comes with a 2.6in touchscreen, a 5Mp rear-facing camera with flash and a front-facing lens to boot. It takes a microSD card so you can add up to 32GB of external memory.

ChaCha(white) £0.00

600 min Unlimited texts

£26.00

Social media madness

If you're thinking of buying the ChaCha then you're most likely a social media junkie.

Of course the ChaCha brings all of your social media accounts together in one rolling widget - you'll get all your Facebook, Twitter or Flickr updates bundled together.

The magic blue button - clearly the major selling point of the ChaCha - doesn’t take you direct to a Facebook app or widget as I’d expected. Instead, it does different things depending on how you're using the phone at the time; if you press it after having just taken a picture, it will invite you to upload it, press it from your homescreen and you can update your status.

But you have to really love Facebook not to get slightly annoyed by the blue flashing button constantly reminding you to share photos, music and locations - as if we’re not already addicted enough.

If you don’t want to go via the blue button, you can also get into Facebook online or through the Android app.

The phone also comes pre-loaded with Facebook Chat, and you can add the usual instant messaging applications, like Whatsapp, from the Android Market to really make the most of that Qwerty keyboard.

Body and build

The ChaCha is designed for the teenage, instant messaging market, and with its white and brushed metal body, it certainly looks the part.

With the ChaCha, the HTC has brought back the “chin” that featured on many of its earlier smartphones. While this may look a little dated, it certainly feels good in the hand - and the little tilt makes it even easier to churn out those witty Facebook updates at superfast speeds.

If you like to keep your phone in your pocket rather than your bag though, the chin can make carrying the ChaCha uncomfortable.

The sim card and memory card are both stored behind the battery, but taking the back off the phone isn’t the easiest thing to do.

The keyboard buttons have a nice feel to them and the hard call and hang up buttons are a nice little throwback to older phones - especially if you struggle with touchscreens during a call.

The function keys take a little getting used to, but you'll be touch-typing your tweets in no time.

Some of these keys also double up as number buttons for dialling, but the ChaCha instinctively knows when you're typing a name, or a number, by which other keys you use when looking for contacts, so this isn’t a problem.

It has a 3.5mm headphone jack so you can use your HTC cans or upgrade to some better buds, as well as a micro-USB port for charging and connecting the your computer.

It also comes with 3G, GPS and Wi-Fi to make sure you stay connected and located at all times.

Gingerbread

While the ChaCha might not boast the fastest processor or the most up to date tech, it does come with the latest version of the Android: Gingerbread.

However, the HTC Sense interface overlayed on the ChaCha is not the most recent 3.0 version - probably because of the fact that it’s an entry-level handset rather than a superpowered smartphone, like the Sensation for example.

Gingerbread gives you everything you've come to love from Android; the ability to customise your various home screens with the widgets and tools you use most, and you can share images, contacts and other files from wherever you are in the phone.

Sound and web

Music quality - always important to teens - was good, both in-ear and through the speaker, and there were no complaints about call quality.

Web browsing is fast on the ChaCha thanks to the speedy HSDPA mobile internet connection. Getting used to the landscape screen was difficult though - and it posed some problems when it came to browsing on the 2.6in screen.

Pages did load quickly, but Flash capabilities were also disappointing, with the phone giving up altogether on some videos.

Navigating the phone and apps in landscape also takes some getting used to, especially when you're used to the much bigger screens you usually get on an HTC.

But if you're making the move from BlackBerry to Android, you'll love the ChaCha.

Find your perfect HTC ChaCha

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