The HTC Status, aka HTC ChaCha -- an Android-based smartphone with a dedicated Facebook share button -- can be used to share updates, photos and videos. The HTC Status will be available on July 17 for $49.99 with a two-year contract.

The BlackBerry Bold 9930/9900 (9930 is CDMA version of 9900), officially announced back in May, boasts a touchscreen handset packing a dual-band CDMA radio and a quad-band GSM tuner along with standard Wi-Fi, Bluetooth antennae and NFC support. The BlackBerry Bold 9900 and its CDMA cousin, the 9930, will be released in September.

Both of these smartphones, with similar display and QWERTY form factor, are expected to be cheaper alternatives in the market.
Here's a look at how the HTC Status and BlackBerry Bold 9930 fare against each other.

Size:
HTC Status has a dimension of 114.4 x 64.6 x 10.7 mm and weighs 120 g while BlackBerry Bold 9930 features 115 x 66 x 10.5 mm and weighs 130 g.

Display:
BlackBerry smartphone sports a 2.8-inch 640 x 480 pixels TFT capacitive touchscreen and HTC Status comes with 2.6-inch 480 x 320 pixels TFT touchscreen.

Input features:
The common input features found in both the smartphones are QWERTY keyboard, proximity sensor for auto turn-off and accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate. However, HTC Status has Gorilla Glass display and BlackBerry smartphone comes with extra input features like touch-sensitive controls and optical trackpad.

Memory:
In terms of memory BlackBerry Bold 9930 packs 8 GB internal storage and 768 MB RAM whereas HTC Status features 512 MB ROM and 512 MB RAM. Both these smartphones have microSD support of up to 32 GB.

3G:
When it comes to 3G, HTC Status will have HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA 384 Kbps support whereas BlackBerry Bold will have Rev.A up to 3.1 Mbps.

WLAN/Bluetooth/USB:
HTC’s smartphone features Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth version 3.0 with A2DP and microUSB version 2.0. And BlackBerry Bold 9930 comes with Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, dual-band, Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth version 2.1 with A2DP, EDR and microUSB version 2.0.

Camera:
Both the smartphones have 5-megapixel 2592 x 1944 pixels camera with autofocus, LED flash, geo-tagging and face detection but RIM’s smartphone has added image stabilization feature. There is no secondary camera in BlackBerry smartphone while HTC Status will have 1.3-megapixel camera and both the smartphones can capture video at 720p.

Operating system:
HTC Status will have the latest Android operating system version 2.3 (Gingerbread) and BlackBerry Bold Touch 9930 comes with BlackBerry OS 7.0.

Processor:
With faster 1.2 GHz processor Qualcomm 8655 Snapdragon processor BlackBerry smartphone looks ahead of HTC Status smartphone’s Qualcomm MSM7227 800 MHz processor.

Battery:
There is a Li-Ion 1250 mAh battery found in HTC Status compared to Li-Ion 1230 mAh found in BlackBerry Bold 9930. The HTC smartphone will offer up to 7 hours of talk time whereas BlackBerry’s is yet to be tested.

Other features:
The common features found in both the smartphones include SMS threaded view, MMS, Email, Push Email, IM, HTML browser, A-GPS support, Java MIDP emulator, digital compass, organizer, voice memo and predictive text input.

Few of features native to Blackberry Bold 9930 include BlackBerry Maps along with NFC support, document editor, MP4/WMV/H.263/H.264 player and MP3/eAAC+/WMA player. And HTC Status will have Facebook dedicated key, SNS integration, Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa integration, document viewer, MP3/AAC+/WAV/WMA player and MP4/H.264 player.

The Facebook button in HTC Status works contextually and lights up whenever you can share multimedia content or status updates through the social networking service such as a song, a website or a photo. AT&T said the Status features a modified version of the HTC Sense user interface that integrates Facebook into the handset's clock, dialer, calendar, address book and photo gallery. The target audience for the smartphone include 18 to 24-year-old.

With Google launching Google+ to counter Facebook, new speculations from an unconfirmed official Google employee shows that Google may ready new Nexus 3 aka Google+ phone to counter the Facebook phone HTC Status in near future. Google+ is gaining new grounds steadily as is expected to be covered with 20 million account registrations.

Google has revealed information of readying an update to integrate new version of the Android Market app that will add tabs for easy access to Google Books and Movies for versions Android 2.2 and above. Google will gradually roll out the update within next several weeks and with $1.99 get access to movies instantly. Once you are in you'll be able to download the Videos app as well.

Here is a video on Google's next version of Android Market integration:

However, the latest news on BlackBerry smartphones shows that Research in Motion plans to launch seven new smartphones with the next generation Blackberry 7 OS. The new phones are expected to allow RIM to meet its financial goals for the year. Apart from BlackBerry Bold 9930/9900, the leaked Touch 9860 Monza/Monaca phones were spied in the wild lately.

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