HTC Salsa launched in India @ Rs.22000

The HTC Salsa which is an Android phone with Facebook functionality has been officially launched it India after it started selling online. The handset has been launched at a Market Operating Price of Rs.22000 and is available for as low as Rs.20500 online. If you are really addicted to Facebook , you can check out the Salsa or wait for the ChaCha with comes with a QWERTY keyboard.

Raises the bar for mobile social phones with the HTC Salsa

New Delhi, India – June 13, 2011 – HTC Corporation, a global leader in mobile innovation and design, today announced the launch of the HTC Salsa in India. The HTC Salsa is powered by the Android operating system and features HTC Sense, HTC’s unique design philosophy that focuses on putting people at the centre by making your phone work in a more simple and natural way. The phone is built entirely to be social, incorporating the simplicity, ease-of-use and depth of HTC Sense.



With the stylishly designed HTC Salsa, you can surf from one website to another with multiple browsing windows, zoom in and out of a page, and watch the text resize automatically on screen. You can merge your different email accounts together into one inbox. All the emails are color coded, so you know what’s what, and you can sort them by importance, groups or content. In keeping with its emphasis on easy social connectivity, the HTC Salsa also provides a one-touch access to the key functions of Facebook, integrated throughout the HTC Sense experience, through a dedicated Facebook button.

According to Faisal Siddiqui, Country Manager, HTC India, ““HTC has always understood that different people want different things and the new HTC Salsa offers special new ways to socialize through a mobile device. With Indians increasingly getting hooked on to the social web, we wanted to create the ultimate socially connected phone which makes this experience simple and convenient.”

The HTC Salsa offers a fast, high-performance smartphone experience. Capture the moment in high-resolution stills or video with the 5-megapixel camera and immediately share it with friends on the generous 3.4-inch, 480 x 320 resolution touch display. Upload your photos to Facebook at the touch of a button. For face-to-face conversations on the move, the VGA front-facing camera enables high-quality video calling.

Pricing & Availability

The new HTC Salsa will be available at a Market Operating Price of Rs. 22,000* at all authorized HTC resellers across the country.

HTC ChaCha Preview

HTC caused a stir at this year’s MWC when they announced the ChaCha and Salsa, two Android devices with their very own Facebook button. Unofficially dubbed the ‘Facebook phones’, the ChaCha allows you to easily update your Facebook status with a simple press of a button.

The HTC ChaCha is a mid-range QWERTY smartphone running on Google Android. Like the HTC Salsa, the ChaCha has a dedicated Facebook button that makes posting updates and pictures onto your Facebook profile easier. Instead of opening the Facebook application, pressing the button will bring you to a screen that allows you to compose your update and attach a picture. Pressing down the button will also allow you to check-in to Facebook ala Foursquare.

HTC recently upgraded the ChaCha’s ARM CPU clockspeed from 600MHz to 800MHz ARM. With 512MB RAM (plenty for a device of this range) and the latest Android Gingerbread 2.3.3, the ChaCha feels quick. It also comes with an accelerometer, digital compass, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, WiFi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, GPS receiver and dual band HSDPA/HSUPA. A 2GB microSD memory card is bundled together, though the device can easily take a 32GB microSD card.

While the 2.6? LCD capacitive touchscreen display may be small, the HVGA resolution is decent. Still the screen here has already been outclassed by the recently announced Nokia E6 and Blackberry 9900, both of which offers 640×480 resolution. You will find a VGA front camera on the top of the display and a 5MP camera with auto-focus and LED flash on the back. Picture quality is decent as long as there are plenty of available light.

The device as a whole is well constructed with liberal amount of metal used on the outer shell, and at 124g, the ChaCha is reasonably light. The QWERTY keyboards are plastic in nature and provides a good amount of key travel and tactile feedback. Four directional keys can be found on the bottom right of the keyboard though I personally prefer a d-pad be placed below the screen. Behind you will find a 1250mAh battery – a decent amount for a device with such a small display, and the none-hot swappable sim and microSD card slots.

Like all of HTC’s Android smartphones, the HTC ChaCha comes preloaded with HTC Sense and an array of other HTC applications. A new lock screen similar to the one on the HTC Sensation is included. It offers a quick way on unlocking the screen by dragging application icons onto the unlock zone to simultaneously unlock the device and launch the application. The Sense installed here is version is 2.1 for Messenger and is optimised for landscape mode.

HTC ChaCha gets CPU bump, now 33 percent faster

Early adopters of the HTC ChaCha were treated to a nice surprise, as HTC had quietly upgraded the handset’s 600MHz processor.

The so-called Facebook Phone will now arrive running an 800MHz Qualcomm SoC chipset, providing a 33 per cent speed boost which should translate into a whizzier status updating and speedier stalking. This comes just days after the ChaCha received its first update, delivering “application and system enhancements”.



Besides its CPU boost and unspecified tweaks, the rest of its the ChaCha’s specs remain unchanged. This means users will be greeted by a 2.6-inch touchscreen, a full portrait QWERTY, and HTC’s Facebook-focussed Gingerbread UI and dedicated networking key. There’s also a 5 megapixel rear-facing camera, a VGA videocall cam, and HSDPA and WiFi connectivity.

The HTC ChaCha is now on sale at Phones4U, and is available to order on Orange and Vodafone tariffs. Prices start from just £20 per month, which’ll bag you a free handset, you 200 minutes, 300 texts and a 250MB data allowance.

EVO 4G Gingerbread Update Already Rooted

Waiting on that rooted ROM for the EVO 4G Gingerbread update, eh? No worries – Viper from XDA has already got you covered. This is fully stock with the exception of it being prerooted, of course. You apply it like you would any ROM and off you are with Android 2.3, free of any of its proverbial chains.

HTC EVO 4G Officially Getting Gingerbread Beginning Tomorrow

That was just a tad bit sooner than we expected, but who’s complaining? The folks at Sprint have just informed everyone that the HTC EVO 4G will be getting its official Gingerbread upgrade tomorrow, June 3rd. The update won’t be pushed to your phone at this time – you’ll have to ping Google’s servers for the goods. Those who’d rather wait for Sprint to notify them can wait until Monday, June 6th, but there really is no point unless you don’t want to be a guinea pig to any potential issues.

HTC EVO™ 4G from Sprint will receive the Android™ 2.3, Gingerbread, update through an over-the-air maintenance release beginning on Monday, June 6.



Sprint will send update notifications to users in waves. The notification will let users know the update is available and provide the simple two-step, over-the-air download instructions.

• Users will receive a notification that Android 2.3 is available for download.

• Once the user has downloaded the update, they will be prompted to install the update. The user will be notified that their device will be disabled during the installation process. The phone will be ready to use once the process completes.

For those who just can’t wait to get Android 2.3, there will be an easy user initiated option to download the upgrade starting on Friday, June 3. To access the update - from the home screen/Menu/Settings/System updates/HTC software Update. This will initiate the upgrade process.

The software release upgrades HTC EVO 4G to Android 2.3, Gingerbread. This version of Android improves download management through the Downloads application, offering the user easy access to any file downloaded from the browser, email or another application. It also fixes the devices ability to stream media through certain applications for the device.

Gingerbread restores HTC EVO 4G’s ability to sync multiple Gmail™ accounts, display email attachments in the email client and fixes battery discharge issues.

HTC officially kills bootloader policy

Homebrew community can mourn HTC ‘s Thunderbolt, Incredible S, impression and EVO 3D, but the company controversial rules block zanizycz is no more. In the wake of the tease yesterday HTC CEO Peter Chou announced with at large–namely, HTC on Facebook pages–that future devices will be open.

We is holding out the hope that this policy will also be retroactive, but this is a very welcome news regardless. Ball in your Court, Motorola.