Vodafone 555 offers QWERTY phone smarts on a tight budget

While the HTC Cha Cha and HTC Salsa handsets may be the smartphones of choice when it comes to Facebook-focussed QWERTY action, those on a tighter budget should take a look at the Vodafone 555.

Onsale from Vodafone today for £62.50, it features a full QWERTY keyboard with a dedicated Facebook button for one-touch access to the world’s leading social network.

As the cheap-as-chips price suggests, this is very much a budget offering. Only offered on PAYG deals (being a 2.5G handset it won’t really need contracted data plans), the entry-level handset uses a proprietary Vodafone OS to pipe Facebook messages into your inbox and keep you up to date with your pals, with new posts and status updates constantly, automatically loaded in the background.

Other features includes its 2.4 inch display, a 2MP camera,, MP3, WMA and AAC playback, and 40MB of storage, which can be boosted to 16GB with a microSD card. FM radio and Bluetooth 2.1 support is also included.

Click here for more info and to order the handset.