Jun 7, 2011 08:32 GMT  ·  By

The highly-anticipated HTC ChaCha has just been added by Three UK to its Android smartphone portfolio

The Facebook-oriented handset is now available for free with a new two-year contract, which seems to be a great deal for the Facebook addicts.

However, the phone was initially launched in the UK by major retailer Phones 4u last week and can still be obtained for free on monthly contracts starting at £20 per month.

The phone has recently received a software update and a hardware upgrade ahead of its launch, as the ChaCha's 600 Mhz CPU was replaced with a slightly better 800 Mhz processor.

According to the carrier, the HTC ChaCha should be available for purchase starting today, but Three UK has yet to add the smartphone to its webstore.

Touted as the true Facebook phone, HTC ChaCha offers users the ultimate Facebook experience thanks to the dedicated button that lets users instantly share almost anything with their friends and complete social networking services integration.

The HTC ChaCha packs 512 MB ROM, 512 MB RAM and microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB).

In addition, the smartphone sports an average 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash and face detection, as well as camcorder and secondary VGA front-facing camera for video calls.

Unlike other Android bar smartphones, the ChaCha features a traditional QWERTY keyboard that makes it easier to text.

The rather small 2.6-inch multi-touch display support 262k colors and 480 x 320 pixels resolution.

Although HTC has originally announced that the ChaCha will be delivered with Android 2.4 on board, it appears Three UK states that the phone runs an earlier Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) platform.

Furthermore, the smartphone is powered by a standard 1250 mAh Li-Ion battery that should provide up to 430 hours (660 hours for 3G) of standby time or up to 7 hours and 30 minutes (7 hours for 3G) of talk time.