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Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, StumbleUpon. This is what people’s lives are made of nowadays. They cannot imagine themselves otherwise, somewhere outside these virtual worlds, where almost everything is possible. And the worst part is that these social networking websites took control over almost everyone, making no discrimination, of any kind.

Here’s the thing: if you observe a lot of people – especially younger – sitting in the front of the computer, you’ll see that they’re doing quite the same thing: going on Facebook, sending instant messages, emailing, listening to music, watching YouTube. Many may also be using Skype. That’s why people will love the INQ1 phone, because the devices these applications require are outside the price range of the majority of people and the INQ1, in stark contrast, is well within most people’s reach.



European wireless network provider 3 has launched the world’s most advanced social networking mobile phone, the INQ1, at least that’s what the company says. The device brings Facebook to your mobile by delivering alerts directly on your cellphone. But more than that, the handset automatically synchronizes contacts with Facebook.

When you switch on the phone, there is a line of icons at the bottom of the screen that includes Facebook, Last.fm, Windows Live Messenger, 3’s mobile web portal and Google as well as traditional icons such as contacts. The very first time when one of those applications from this list of widgets, such as Facebook, is launched, all you have to do is to log in once and whenever the phone is switched an icon will appear at the top of the home screen to say that user is online.



You can say goodbye to launching browsers, fiddling with menus, just immediate “presence”, which the user’s friends can see whether they are online. This online status is also available for Skype and MSN Messenger – the phone does not yet support AOL IM or Google Chat.

In addition, you’ll see that accessing Facebook is surprisingly fast and despite the small size of the screen, compared with some other devices, it is clear and easy to read.

But the fact that applications such as Facebook are integrated into the phone, rather than merely running in a browser on the device, helped 3 to go further: creating an inbox which pulls together texts, emails, IM and Skype Chat as well as Facebook pokes, messages and notifications, all in one place. The phone supports 3’s own email service as well Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo. Any IM and Facebook updates will be immediately “pushed” to the phone and bring up an alert.



The integration on online applications is also obvious in the phone’s contacts book, where individual contacts include that person’s status update from Facebook as well as their picture – which pops up when they call – as well as information about whether they are online in Facebook, IM or Skype, making it easy to see who may be instantly contactable and by what means.

The features of the INQ1 include: a 3.2 megapixel camera, a 2.2 inch QVGA (high resolution) 262k colors display, an internal memory of 50 MB, with the possibility of expanding the storage using external memory of up to 4 GB. An accelerometer is also included for automatic user interface rotation.

The INQ1 comes in silver or black with a two-year warranty and costs $179 on 3 prepaid of for only $39 per month, which includes unlimited data use for networking obsessives, along with 75 minutes of calls to all networks.

(Source: cellphonebeat.com)