At the end of last week Three officially announced it’s new range of social networking focused mobiles, with the first handset, the INQ1, to hit the shelves a couple of weeks before Christmas.
The handset itself will come with all the usual bells and whistles; such as a 3.2MP camera, Accelerometer, Bluetooth, and HSDPA but thats not really the point here. With the INQ1 Three are trying to offer some of the features of a smart phone but at a more affordable price point. 
The main focus is on the integration of some of the most popular social networking tools; Facebook, Windows Live Messenger, RSS Feeds, Skype, Last.fm and more! Not content with that, they are already working hard on adding Ebay and Yahoo [chat] as soon as possible, these will be added via an over the air update though we can’t say exactly when this will happen.
This phone is pretty nifty, not the smartest in the world, but it is at least intuitive. You will only once have to log in and synchronise your contacts, and as you do it with each application they are merged together so that each and every user has a complete profile of information stored in one place. Likewise, when receiving mail, it all goes into one integrated inbox, no matter which application it came from. It also includes nice touches such as automatically changing avatar and status pictures, from sites such as Facebook. It’s all automated - it’s always on, so you don’t even have to remember to check and see what your friends are up to.
The phone is built on a variation of the brew platform to allow multiple applications to run seamlessly together. And this in turn allows full cross integration of your most frequently used apps.
Another bonus of the automated synching is that it allows you to respond to all of your pokes, invites, mail, messenger chats etc even while you have no internet access (like on the underground) and as soon as you get reception it will update the relevant sites automatically. Magic!
Available from free on contracts of £15 per month, or just £79 on PAYG; whichever you go for you can expect unlimited access to your social networking clients. With aggressive pricing of both the handset and option plans Three are trying to open up the market place to those that can’t afford, or simply don’t want, to spend that much money on a Blackberry or iPhone; this isn’t designed to be a niche product - it’s designed to proliferate. Launching on the friendly side of Christmas at such a price will no doubt help it to do just that.