Aug 1, 2011 18:31 GMT  ·  By

Confirmed by TELUS one month ago, HTC Status has just hit shelves and is now available for purchase for as low as $29.99 with a new three-year agreement.

The Facebook-focused smartphone is available in two color schemes, black and purple, and can be purchased for $249.99 without a contract.

In addition, TELUS offers customers the option to acquire the HTC Status for $149.99 with a new two-year agreement or $199.99 with a new one-year contract.

Generally known as HTC ChaCha, the HTC Status made its debut in North America via AT&T on July 17 and is available for purchase for $49.99 with a new two-year agreement.

While there are no hardware difference between the two models, the HTC ChaCha comes with HTC Sense 2.1 user interface, whereas the HTC Status features the stock UI.

However, both versions are powered by Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and feature a full portrait QWERTY keyboard, along with a dedicated Facebook share button.

The latter allows users to share instantly from almost anywhere on their phone, including music, album art from the music player, or photos taken with the camera.

In addition, users can press and hold the Facebook share button to check-in places or post what they are reading while browsing online.

HTC Status sports a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash, as well as a secondary 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video chats.

The smartphone is equipped with a Qualcomm MSM7227 800 MHz processor and packs 512 MB of internal memory 512 MB of RAM, as well as microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB).

Given the phone's Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Wi-Fi hotspot capabilities, users will be able to create a Wi-Fi hotspot to share web access with multiple Wi-Fi-enabled devices.

Obviously, the phone comes with HSDPA and HSUPA support for faster data speed transfers via TELUS' HSPA+ network.