14 DAY TRIAL // It looks like fans of the popular social networking service Facebook living in the UK will be able to purchase the HTC ChaCha in early June after all.
The smartphone was recently listed by major retailer Clove as available for pre-order and shipping on June 6.
Clove is the third UK retailer that introduces the HTC ChaCha onto its offering, after Amazon UK and Carphone Warehouse announced that they are taking pre-orders for the handset.
However, Clove UK is the first to unveil the phone's actual release date, as the other two retailers only mentioned that it will be available in June.
Potential customer who wish to purchase the HTC ChaCha will have to pay around £252 (tax included) upfront, which is the equivalent of roughly $410.
HTC ChaCha is one of two “Facebook phones” showcased by the Taiwanese handset manufacturer during the 2011 Mobile World Congress, back in February.
Obviously, the ChaCha was manufactured in collaboration with Facebook and features a dedicated button that lets users instantly share almost anything.
Whenever a picture is taken, the button flashes and, if the user wants to post the picture onto his Facebook account, he only needs to push the key.
Equipped with a 600 MHz processor, HTC ChaCha packs 512 MB ROM, 512 MB RAM and microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB).
HTC ChaCha sports a traditional QWERTY keyboard and a rather small 2.6-inch multi-touch display with 262k colors support and 480 x 320 pixels resolution.
Surprisingly, the phone is delivered with Google's Android 2.4 Gingerbread with a customized HTC Sense UI to offer a smooth Facebook experience.
Although the price might seem a bit steep, those who wish to take advantage of a better offer for the Facebook-centric smartphone can get it for free from Carphone Warehouse with a new two-year £20 per month contract.