HTC Salsa

“The HTC Salsa may be a smaller, budget device, with Facebook at its core but it's actually a surprisingly grown up smartphone. It's smartly styled, speedy in operation, packed full of features, and can get you to Facebook nirvana quicker than you can say toasted Tortilla. Whether your desire for Facebook fripperies is strong enough to overcome the slightly high price is more of a personal preference issue but if you do like the idea then it's very well executed.”

“The Salsa is a neat phone with all the features you’d expect from a high-ender, only in a smaller package. The Facebook stuff is gimmicky and you could do much the same thing with an onscreen shortcut and a few free apps, but the convenience of it is still a big plus for serial socialisers.”

“So let’s get to the nitty-gritty. What is the HTC Salsa - is it a Facebook phone? It is if you want it to be, but then Facebook isn’t exactly alien to the Android world. There isn’t anything here that you can’t do elsewhere. Putting it against the INQ Cloud Touch, the other current “Facebook phone”, is a little unfair. The Salsa is a higher spec device, offers a better Android experience reflecting HTC’s experience with these types of devices, but the Facebook experience is less cohesive than INQ’s. The INQ Cloud Touch manages to feel unique, whereas the Facebook experience on the HTC Salsa feels familiar, only fractionally removed from their existing features, so it all looks and feels like the adaption of HTC Sense that it is.But that said the HTC Salsa is a great Android smartphone, a good example of how great the Android experience can be on a mid-range affordable device. It isn’t going to compete on the multimedia front with its bigger brothers, but in the core Android experience it responds well. We prefer it to the HTC Wildfire S, it offers more power and a few interesting tweaks that give you a little more to play with. We’re not sold on the weird split colouring on the back panel, but otherwise, whether you’re a Facebook fan or not, the HTC Salsa is a great little phone.”

“If I'm honest, I struggled to like the HTC Salsa as much as other recent HTC smartphones. Admittedly, that's probably because I'm not a massive fan of Facebook, and the Salsa feels like a step backward in comparison to the recent slew of top-end devices that I've had from HTC, but I just didn't gel with it as much as I might have hoped.Perhaps if the Facebook integration was a bit more snazzy and provided a real step-up from the existing Facebook abilities of other handsets then I'd have been more impressed. In reality, the dedicated Facebook button does little more than the on-screen share button that can be found on all recent HTC Android devices.That said, I think this could be the perfect phone for the right person: someone who wants an affordable smartphone with decent specs and has a hunger for social networking. I dare say I'd have liked it far more if I was a full-time Facebook dweller, as many folks are these days - so if this sounds like you, then the Salsa could be worth a look.”