HTC Salsa and ChaCha shimmy onto Amazon with SIM-free prices

Two of HTC's forthcoming Android phones, the Salsa and ChaCha, are now available to pre-order on Amazon UK.

We've known for a while that this pair of Facebook-friendly mobiles will arrive in the UK in June. Vodafone, T-Mobile and Orange will sell the handsets.

What we didn't know was the price. Amazon has kindly divulged that the ChaCha will cost £250 and the Salsa £320. These are the SIM-free prices, leaving you the choice of network to connect to. Expansys, where we first found the phones listed, has not yet added pricing information for either handset.

Amazon has set a release date of 26 June for both SIM-free handsets, with the usual 'subject to change' caveat. This is close to the 17 June network launch date previously cited.

You're always going to pay a hefty wad of cash for the privilege of avoiding a long contract tie-in. But these aren't top-end smart phones, so they should be available on reasonably priced tariffs too. Either way, you'll probably need a decent data plan, as Facebook access is a primary feature of these phones.

With over a month to wait and still no firm news on contract pricing, we can't get too excited about the Salsa and ChaCha. They're not bad phones but neither are they spectacular. It's not as if we're struggling to find impressive Android-powered handsets this summer either, with phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S 2 and HTC Sensation among them.