Finally the wait is over! After several months of various phone models being leaked on the internet, the first Android-powered Motorola phone has finally been announced. The Motorola Cliq, as it’s called in the US, appears to be the refined version of what used to be called the Motorola Morrison.
Likewise, true to the previous report, it will indeed be headed for T-Mobile for the holidays. So, apart from full QWERTY keypad, what else can we expect from the Cliq? Well, how does a 3.1-inch 320×480 touchscreen display, 5-megapixel autofocus camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS complete with turn-by-turn directions, quad-band GSM, WCDMA 900/1700/2100, and 7.2Mbps HSDPA, and Android 1.5 as its OS sound to you? Not bad, eh? It also boasts of having a Qualcomm MSM7201A 528MHz processor running at the helm that’s supported by 256MB RAM/512MBROM with a 2GB microSD card as part of the package.
Motorola is also taking this opportunity to debut MotoBlur. It’s their answer to the Synergy feature in Palm’s webOS which also serves to add their own customization to the Android platform that should set this phone apart from the rest of the pack. Here’s a quote from their press release which best explains what MotoBlur has to offer:
Developed by Motorola, MOTOBLUR is an innovative solution that manages and integrates communications – from work e-mail to social networking activity – on your CLIQ. Updates to contacts, posts, messages, photos and more are streamed together and synced from sources including Facebook®, Twitter™, MySpace®, Gmail™, and work and personal e-mail. MOTOBLUR automatically delivers these updates to the home screen in easy-to-view streams so there is no need to open and close different mobile applications to keep up with the latest content.
Here’s a video demo courtesy of Engadget showing of MotoBlur and the other features found on the Motorola Cliq:
It will be available in midnight titanium and winter white colored iterations and is expected to hit T-Mobile before the year comes to a close. Its price wasn't revealed, but based on a slip-up on their website, it could retail for $0 on-contract or $399.99 outright purchase. Internationally, it will be called the Motorola Dext and is confirmed to be headed for Latin America, France, the UK, and Spain. No word on Canada yet, but this could potentially be the Motorola Android phone Rogers will be debuting next year.
So, what do you guys think? Can the Motorola Cliq get you to jump on-board the Android bandwagon or are you waiting for something bigger, say the Motorola Sholes perhaps, to be announced?
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