Mobile Phones Blog

Talk to the Facebook – 3’s forthcoming social networking handset

November 13th, 2008 by Thomas

More details have emerged concerning the forthcoming ‘Facebook Phone’ developed by INQ, an offshoot of Hutchinson, owners of 3 Mobile.

Designed purely with social networking in mind, the INQ1 – pronounced ‘ink one’ – is a slim tablet slider phone that looks set to take the wind out of the sales of the high-falutin’ likes of Apple and T-Mobile with their fancy pants iPhones and G1s – the INQ1 will retail for the very credit-crunch friendly price of FREE on 3 contracts costing upwards of just £15 a month for 18 months.

For said amount, you get unlimited access to Facebook, unlimited texts, 1GB worth of mobile browsing, and 75 cross network minutes (plus free anytime calls to other 3 customers). A mere £5 extra a month gives you all this plus 200 minutes instead of 75. Those who want to shell out for the INQ1 on Pay As You Go will be expected to cough up a mere £80.

By contrast, the iPhone 3G is only available free on contracts worth £45 or more, and costs nearly 300 clams to own on PAYG. Similarly, the T-Mobile G1 is only available free on 18 month contracts upwards of £40.

The INQ1 will automatically sync contacts from Facebook to your address book, to the extent that a user’s display picture will appear on the screen when they call you.

Icons on the main menu scroll along the bottom of the screen a la Mac OS X, and provide one-touch shortcuts to social networking mainstays Facebook, Skype, and MSN Messenger. There’s no QWERTY for two-thumb typing action, and no GPS for geotagging pictures, but 3 have said that QWERTY and GPS versions of the INQ1 can be expected next year.

Whilst there’s been no official confirmed date for the release of the INQ1 itself, you can bet your hair straighteners on the fact that it’ll be out in time for Christmas.

Needless to say, social networking fanatics will lap this up – the only real drawback is the lack of a front-facing camera. Whilst the 3.2 Megapixel camera is adequate for taking pics destined for wall posts and Facebook photo albums, what every social networker worth their salt really wants is a front facing camera, so that they can make sure their expertly sculpted fringe is of the requisite shape, and the picture is taken from that angle… but in all honesty, that’s more of a Myspace thing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 6:00 pm and is filed under 3G, G1, Google, HTC, T-Mobile, iPhone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.