Opera Software and Hutchison Whampoa-backed INQ have agreed to preinstall the Opera Mini mobile browser on a range of Android-powered INQ smartphones and BREW-based feature phones. They'll be rolled out in the UK this month.

More than 90 million people worldwide currently use the Opera Mini browser, which compresses data to shrink web pages by up to 90%.

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.

Yesterday, technology news website TechCrunch reported rumours that Facebook was 'building' a mobile phone by creating the software and working with a third party for the hardware. It noted that Facebook wanted to integrate itself into the contacts list and other core functions. A possible partnership with INQ was suggested, which would follow in the footsteps of the INQ1 handset.

Mark Bridge writes:

Mention 'anonymity' to anyone these days and it's pretty likely they'll start talking about Facebook. Maybe Google Street View, maybe RF chips in passports... but probably Facebook.

This 'over sharing' of personal information is a far cry from the situation a few years ago. Once, no-one on the internet really admitted who they were. That New Yorker cartoon - "Nobody knows you're a dog" - wasn't far off the truth. You couldn't tell a dungeonmaster from a librarian when they were online.

The UK's Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint about a TV ad for the Motorola DEXT. The advertisement for the DEXT (known as the CLIQ in the USA) described it as "the first phone with social skills", emphasising the way it offered easy access to messaging and social networking services.

However, INQ challenged the claim, pointing to its own phones that had been released before the DEXT.