Vodafone targets HTC ChaCha with Vodafone Blue

Do you fancy the ChaCha, but feel it’s a little out of your budget? Well, this might cheer you up a bit. Vodafone has just announced a new QWERTY phone with none other than a Facebook button. Called the Vodafone Blue, the phone was developed in collaboration with Facebook and aims to bring the similar experience HTC did with the ChaCha. Unlike the ChaCha though, the Vodafone Blue will cost just Rs. 4,950 and will obviously not be running Android.

Smart move from Vodafone

The FB treatment is given to every aspect of the phone, so even your FB chats will appear in your inbox alongside your regular messages. The handset will have a 2MP camera allowing you to share pictures at the press of a button. Even your address book is synced with your FB contacts. The QWERTY phone sports a 2.4-inch display and comes with Opera Mini 5 as well. The form factor seems very similar to HTC’s offering which means it should be easy to carry around. Finally, there’s also FM Radio and a 3.5mm headphone jack. According to Ovum, the Blue is a prepaid phone and will be SIM locked. Users will have to sign up for a special pre-paid plan in order to use it which will include a data plan as well. The handset does not support 3G unfortunately, only EDGE. With the phone costing neatly three times less than HTC’s offering, it could do very well with the youth who don’t have access to that kind of money.