T-Mobile officially launched the Cliq XT, which is essentially the Cliq without the keyboard.  If you’re so inclined you can grab the MOTOBLUR powered phone for $129.99 after signing 2-years of your life away.

Features:

• Touchscreen
• 5 megapixel camera
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• MOTOBLUR for social networking, etc
• Proximity sensor
• WiFi
• Android OS
• microSD card slot
• LED camera flash
• FM radio
• GPS

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As promised the Motorola Backflip, AT&T’s first Android phone, has officially gone on sale.  Head over to America’s fastest 3G network and you can score one for $99.99 after a 2-year contract and a $100 mail-in-rebate.  Oh yeah, you’ll have to purchase at least a $30/month data plan to be eligible for the rebate.  Hold out a few weeks and Wirefly and co will be carrying it for free if not half this price.

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NOTE: This is the lowest we’ve ever seen this phone

Pop the champagne!  AT&T just officially announced their first Android handset, the Motorola Backflip.  Okay, I’m way overstating my excitement, but it’s good to see Big Blue jump on board with the mobile Google OS.

The Backflip is a Motoblur device and unlike other flip phones is a reverse flip.  What’s that mean?  The QWERTY keyboard folds onto the back of the handset as opposed to over the screen.  Features include WiFi, a 5 megapixel camera, 3G connectivity, a 3.1-inch touchscreen display and more.

The Backflip will launch on March 7th for $100 after a $100 mail-in-rebate and 2-year signing.

Video announcement and unboxing video after the ‘leap’

Word is born!  Motorola’s Devour will hit the “indirect channel” retail outlets in blurring fury on February 25th.  After that VZW’s retail outlets will pick up the phone on March 15th.  There still mention of price, but a few hundos might be in order, even though BGR is reporting $99 as the magical price point.

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NOTE: It’s also available in White and you must sign a 2-year contract to get this price

Verizon broke new ground this week with the introduction of the Motorola DEVOUR, their first smartphone to sport MOTOBLUR.  Feature wise were looking at a 3.1-inch touchscreen, touch-sensitive nav pad, Android OS, 8GB microSD card slot, Bluetooth with A2DP support, 3G connectivity, media player, WiFi, a slide out QWERTY keyboard, GPS and much more.  There’s no word on a price but you can expect the street date to hit sometime in March.

MOTOROLA DEVOUR™ BRINGS MOTOBLUR™ TO VERIZON WIRELESS’ 3G DATA NETWORK

MOTOBLUR Service Gives Customers Home Screen Access to Content and Contacts

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., and LIBERTYVILLE, Ill. – Verizon Wireless and Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) today announced the availability of Motorola DEVOUR™ in March.   Motorola DEVOUR will be the first Verizon Wireless phone to feature MOTOBLUR™, Motorola’s unique Android™-powered content delivery service created to make wireless phones more personal and customizable.

MOTOBLUR is the first solution to sync contacts from work and personal e-mail services, including Gmail™, with posts, messages, photos and more from popular sites such as Facebook®, MySpace and Twitter.  With MOTOBLUR, content is automatically delivered to the home screen and fed into easy-to-manage streams.

Key features:
·         Touch-sensitive navigation pad
·         3.1” capacitive touch screen
·         Pre-loaded applications such as Gmail, Google Talk™, YouTube™, Google Search™ and Google Maps™ with Google Maps Navigation.
·         Android Market™ gives users access to more than 20,000 applications.
·         Happenings Widget – MOTOBLUR automatically pushes status updates, wall posts and photo updates from popular social networking sites to the Happenings Widget on the home screen. Customers can flick through the latest updates and fire back responses using the slide-out full QWERTY keyboard.
·         Universal Inbox – MOTOBLUR gathers texts, social network messages and e-mails into one home screen widget for quick response.
·         Back-Up and Security – Contacts, log-in information, home screen customizations, e-mail and social network messages are backed up automatically on the secure MOTOBLUR portal.  The portal also allows customers to use the phone’s fully integrated aGPS to help locate the phone if misplaced. Remote wipe easily clears information from a lost device.
·         8 GB microSD™ card pre-installed
·         Bluetooth® profiles supported: A2DP, HID, HSP, HFP, AVRCP and GAP

Service plans:
·         To get the most from Motorola DEVOUR, customers will need to subscribe to a Nationwide Talk or Nationwide Talk & Text plan and a Data Package for smartphones.  Nationwide Talk plans begin at $39.99 monthly access, and Nationwide Talk & Text plans begin at $59.99 monthly access.  A Data Package for smartphones is $29.99 for unlimited monthly access.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Media can access high-resolution images of Motorola DEVOUR in the Verizon Wireless Multimedia Library at www.verizonwireless.com/multimedia.)

About Verizon Wireless
Verizon Wireless operates the nation’s most reliable and largest wireless voice and 3G data network, serving more than 91 million customers. Headquartered in Basking Ridge, N.J., with  83,000 employees nationwide, Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) and Vodafone (NASDAQ and LSE: VOD).  For more information, visit www.verizonwireless.com. To preview and request broadcast-quality video footage and high-resolution stills of Verizon Wireless operations, log on to the Verizon Wireless Multimedia Library at www.verizonwireless.com/multimedia.

Ever since the iPhone became one of the most ubiquitous smartphones on the market AT&T’s service has just straight up sucked.  In fact, Apple’s Genius bar states that a 30% call drop rate in in NYC isn’t outside the norm.  Shame on you AT&T.  So the next logical question is what is one to do if they want an iPhone like experience, but not the shitty call quality that comes with it?  Enter the Motorola DROID from Verizon Wireless.  Battery life issues aside this phone is the just what Big Red needs to play down AT&T’s competitive edge.

The DROID rocks a 3.7-inch 854×480 capacitive touchscreen.  It’s a bit on the heavy side (169g), but that is largely in part to the slide out QWERTY keyboard.  Build wise its metal body feels extremely solid in the hand; as if it could take a tumble down a flight of stairs and keep on ticking.

Other features for the DROID include 3G connectivity, a 5 megapixel camera, 3.5mm headphone jack, removable battery (grin), microSD card slot, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS (more on that later), accelerometer, haptic screen feedback and 4 dedicated touchscreen buttons (back, settings, home and search).

OS wise were looking at Google’s Android OS. And although this is my first review, heck even my first experience with Android, I can’t say enough good things about it. It’s just as intuitive as any other Smartphone OS on the market today and includes an application store, though it’s still growing and attracting developer talent, but it still boasts one of the strongest app libraries.   While I didn’t find the UI to be as intuitive as I hoped, 90% of my experience was pain free; navigating some of the back end menus, such as phone settings were a bit cryptic.

The DROID’s screen is very bright and actually looks fantastic even in direct light.  It’s capacitive which means it’s very reactive to the finger with no lag and requires no stylus.  When rotating the phone the DROID will rotate the screen to landscape mode, but unlike the iPhone can’t rotate 360 degrees;  it can only rotate the screen in orientation compatible with the keyboard and not upside down.

As of now the Android OS on the DROID lacks multitouch (no pinch to zoom), so you’ll have to depend on some on screen buttons to zoom in and out of say Google maps, though tapping will work for zooming in.  It has kinetic scrolling when scrolling through a long menu or web page, but it’s not as nice as the iPhone’s OS as it tends to stop abruptly and just doesn’t feel as natural – hardly a deal breaker.

The QWERTY keyboard will surely draw in those folks who are moving from a Palm handheld.  Let me preface my experience with the fact that I’ve never been a physical QWERTY keyboard guy.  My preference is for the virtual QWERTY keyboard or on screen keyboard, but fortunately the DROID rocks both.  Slide out the QWERTY and the screen will immediately convert to landscape mode.  During my texting and email experiences I found the keys to be a bit too close together resulting in an ‘A’ instead of an ‘S’.  This could be resolved in the next iteration by adding a slight oval shape, or bump to each key.   The right side of the keyboard includes a directional pad with a single click button.  This I found useless since the phone sports a touchscreen and took up vital keyboard space – Nokia learned this lesson with the N97.

Voice search has long been the thing of gimmick.  But in the case of the DROID and Google’s Android OS, no more.  The voice search is actually useful.  Speak “GadgetReview” into the iPhone and it will dial a phone number.  Speak “GadgetReview” into the DROID after hitting the Google Voice Search button and it will perform a Google search.  In the case of the Voice Dialer it will bring up the contact’s name and require you to confirm before placing the call, but nonetheless it’s very accurate.

Battery life on the DROID could be better, but since you can replace the battery you could very well just purchase a set of separate batteries.  During my testing a partial day of GPS use (Google Navigation) resulted in a dead battery.  Standby time, with no use, maxed out around 2 to 2.5 days give or take depending on signal quality (the less signal or bars the more juice cell phones use).

The camera on DROID is 5 megapixels and includes an LED flash.  Unfortunately, and as you’ve probably read it’s not problem free.  There is a bug in the software which causes ’soft’ or out of focus pictures.  Fortunately, this will eventually be fixed (December 11th) and since it’s not a hardware problem it’s nothing to tear your hair out over or should negate the purchase of this phone, unless of course you’ve got some serious plans for photogging.  The DROID can also record video, 720 video to be exact.  Strangely there is just a fixed focal length for video capture mode.  When it comes to picture quality the DROID’s preview of the photo (what you see on the display before snapping the photo) is worse than the results.  I was a bit turned off by this since it made it difficult to know if I was going to achieve a quality pic.  I tested the DROID’s camera – still photos – against the iPhone 3GS and despite the greater amount of megapixels and sporting a flash, the iPhone reigned slightly superior.

Bluetooth on the DROID works, but was a bit finicky, at least when pairing it with the Jabra Stone.  Now I can’t say which had the problem but it took me more than a few attempts to get the DROID to agree with the Stone.  When it finally did I had no problems making calls.  As of now you can’t place a call using the DROID’s Voice Dialer with a Bluetooth headset; you’ll need to speak into the handset.

As for syncing the DROID with your computer: forget it if you’ve got a Mac.  There are a few aftermarket options out there, but as of this review Motorola has yet to develop a Mac friendly sync tool.  For all you “PC’ users, though, you’ll be glad to here that Motorola developed a piece of software, called Medialink, that syncs your contacts and even your iTunes music.  Nonetheless, I find it extremely disappointing that Motorola couldn’t make the time to develop a Mac friendly sync tool, especially seeing as they’re clearly attempting to compete with the iPhone.

What makes the DROID completely unusual from any other phone, including other Android based Smartphones, is that its the first to receive Google Maps Navigation.  Some might still question whether or not Google Maps Navigation can supplant a stand alone GPS.  Three words: without a doubt.  Although the Google Maps Navigation UI isn’t as speedy as a stand alone GPS it has yet to completely fail me; it put me at the wrong end of a street that was in fact a dead end and required me to walk two minutes to my destination, something stand alone GPS devices have long done.  There are so many options that I can hardly go into all of them and nor will I since I could write 5 pages on the app.  But if you’re looking for a new Smartphone and a GPS device, look no further.

So one question remains: Is this the DROID that you’ve been looking for?  Unequivocally, YES!  Unless of course you’re a Mac user.  Apple sync software issues aside (as in there is none in existence), the DROID is a stellar phone, with a solid build, fantastic touchscreen and an awesome OS.

Pros:

• Fantastic touchscreen
• QWERTY keyboard is nice to have
• Google Maps Navigation means just one device

Cons:

• Battery life could be better
• QWERTY keyboard keys too close together
• Camera preview misleading

You can currently buy the DROID from Wirefly for just $120 after a 2-year contract signing.

Of note, Motorola just issued a software update that actually enhances the phone’s abilities, such as better call quality, battery life and more.  You can find more info here.

By now everyone and their mother knows that Motorola dropped the ball a few years ago and has been struggling to gain back market share in the US.  The RAZR was a massive success but after that it was all downhill – they sort of eclipsed themselves.  But alas, the handset maker is back and this time they’ve got a brand new bag: the Motorola DROID!  It’s one of Moto’s first Android handsets and based on my quick unboxing video above, I likely.  The handset is heavy, but in a good way and nice and solid feeling unlike Apple’s iPhone.  Enjoy.

Motorola’s CLIQ is now available at T-Mobile for $199.99 after a 2-year contract signing or $399.99 if you opt for one of T-Mobile’s Even More Plus plans, which requires no annual contract. Feature wise the CLIQ offers an always on home screen…

To continue reading “T-Mobile Launches Motorola CLIQ, $200 With 2-Year Contract” head to PhoneDig

It’s pretty evident that Google Maps Navigation will be the big news today, but if you’re in the market for a compatible handset, good news.  Motorola’s Droid will be available November 6th for $199.99 after a $100 mail-in-rebate and 2-year contract signing.  Video walk through of someone that I suppose could totally be my cousin or something…

BTW, this will be the first device to have Google Maps Navigation.

How many iterations of one cell phone can you have before it gets tired?  Apparently one too many in the case of Motorola’s Aura.  If you remember we saw a diamond edition this past February and now the struggling handset maker is back with another version, except this one is clad in a gold like (or real) finish and includes 34 diamonds, 65 less than the previous version.  Cost?  £3500 ($5,700 US).  Availability? October 26th.

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Looking to get your Droid on this Fall? Then you might wanna delve into the phone’s spec list, which is now free for all to peruse on Motorola’s website. So what we looking at? A 3.7-inch touchscreen, Android OS, 5 megapixel camera with 640×480 video, Google Search by Voice, slide out keypad, media player, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, aGPS, Exchange support, 1400 mAh Lithium Ion battery (270 hour standby or 385 minutes of use), 3.5mm headphone jack, speakerphone and Flash10 support.

Unfortunately, there is still no official word on a price or release date.

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The folks over at BGR got their hands on the new Motorola Droid and, boy, does it looks killer, as in almost iPhone killer. Looks like Motorola is back on track with a full QWERTY slider phone that’s amazingly only slightly thicker than an iPhone 3GS. Ultra-slick design, solid construction, huge screen, fast processor, and Android 2.0 to boot? What’s not to…

To continue reading “Motorola Droid Gets Groped” head to PhoneDig

Motorola has already made their allegiance to the Android platform clear as day; they’ve all but moved into Google’s offices.  Now one of the many anticipated handsets from the handset manufacture, code named ‘Sholes‘ or ‘Shules’, now ‘Droid’, has made some time for the camera.  Based on badging Verizon appears to be the carrier of choice, but that’s all we got for now.

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