Hacker News Reader

Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

Reminds of HTC Cha Cha, with the Facebook button. That never went anywhere either.

I think this is a bit different though. It's aimed at a very low end of the market, people who are cost conscious tie up nicely with WhatsApp demographic from what I've seen.

It also isn't just about that button, its a minor iterative design on an existing phone which by all accounts sold well, though judging by Nokia's last quarter, it probably has little gross margin.

The thing I find interesting is that in the UK the 'media' doesn't talk about WhatsApp, they fawn over twitter endlessly, facebook and iWhatever too. But I've never seen anything on the BBC news about it, despite the fact most people I know now use it more than SMS/Email.

Myself I just wish WhatsApp had a decent desktop component.

Most of the people I know in the UK use Viber. Likewise most people I know in Japan use Line, Lot's of people in the CHina region use Wechat. It's still a fragmented market and SMS is still the only service that is common. With operators looking to disrupt the market with RCS, it will only fragment it more.

I have had a HTC ChaCha for quite a while.

It would have been a great phone however the memory management is embarrassingly bad [1]. If they had sorted the memory problem and allowed the dedicated FB button to be used for anything e.g take photos or activate a chat app, they would have made a dent in the phone market.

[1] https://www.google.com.ng/search?q=htc+chacha+memory+problem...

So, basically, if they had made a better phone with an extra button.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com