14 DAY TRIAL // Touted as the first real Facebook phones, INQ Cloud Touch and Cloud Q have been announced in early February and made a consistent appearance at the 2011 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Both devices are entry-level Android smartphones that deliver users a fully live Facebook experience, which is said to be developed around the manufacturer's Visual Media Feed UI.
It looks like INQ Cloud Touch will be the first to be available on the market, as Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy retailers have recently announced the exclusive arrival of the Android device.
Currently, the Cloud Touch is available for pre-order from the Carphone Warehouse webstore, and will be available from April 6th from just £20 a month on contract, £199.95 on PAYG or £299.95 unlocked.
INQ Cloud Touch comes with a 3.5-inch HGVA capacitive touch screen, with 262k colors support and 320 x 480 pixels resolution.
It only packs 4MB of internal memory, which can be expanded up to 8GB thanks to the microSD card slot. According to the manufacturer, the phone will be delivered with a 2GB microSD memory card in the sales package.
Specially designed for social media fans, INQ Cloud Touch is a sleek device which runs on the Android 2.2 operating system and is powered by a Qualcomm MSM 7227 600 MHz processor.
Thanks to the new Facebook app, users will be provided with live feeds on the home screen and one-touch links to Chat, Friends, Messages, Wall and Notifications.
Along with Cloud Q, the Could Touch is one of the first phones to use the Facebook social graph API, which enables users to follow updates from the friends they interact with the most.
The INQ Cloud Touch is the first mobile phone to hit the market that has been designed specifically for Facebook users. However, more devices are expected in the coming months, including the INQ Cloud Q in June, which will also be exclusive to Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy. HTC Salsa and ChaCha are also slated for a Q2 release, so we should expect more competition for these “Facebook phones” in the near future.