INQ Mobile, which has Hutchison Whampoa as its parent company, says it plans to have two Android-powered ‘Facebook phones’ on the market later this year.
The INQ Cloud Touch is an Android 2.2 device running a 600MHz Qualcomm chip and a 3.5-inch HGVA screen, while the INQ Cloud Q has a 2.6-inch screen and a QWERTY keyboard. The phones are the first mobiles to use the Facebook social graph API, making it easy for people to follow updates from the friends they interact with most. The homescreen has a Facebook feed, while Facebook Events is integrated with the Google Calendar on both devices. Both devices also use Spotify as their default music player on and have a dedicated Spotify key.
Frank Meehan, INQ’s CEO, said “We started the ‘Social Mobile’ category 3 years ago with the Skypephone and INQ1, as we believed integrating the internet was the future of mobile. Since then, Facebook has evolved from a social network to become an incredibly powerful global communications platform. Speed and simplicity of access to things you love is our DNA, so our next step is to make it even easier for people to experience the richness of Facebook – all from the homescreen. We also love Spotify, an amazing service that brings the benefits of the ‘cloud’ to consumers, so we made it even easier for Spotify customers to access their music. INQ is all about enhancing the mobile experience, using the power and flexibility of Google’s brilliant Android platform which ultimately makes all this possible.”
The INQ Cloud Touch will be available in April 2011, with the INQ Cloud Q following in Q3 2011. They’ll be sold by The Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy in the UK.