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Motorola CLIQ: best Android phone ever *
* …Considering this is only the third-ever Android phone and that we only got an hour to play with the phone under the tutelage of some Motorola reps.
The CLIQ is a heavy phone. I don't just mean physically — it makes a weighty impression after using it for just an hour. Besides some nice convenience features (like a headphone jack), the phone's real secret weapon is the MOTOBLUR software, which leverages the Android OS to better organize everything on your phone that doesn't involve calls. Which these days is a lot.
More after the jump.
Physically, at 5.7 ounces, the CLIQ (see more photos here) is surprisingly heavy, but it was hard to figure out why. You get Android's pop-up touch QWERTY as well as a three-line slide-out QWERTY keypad, which is easier to handle with easier-to-read keys than the keyboard on the first-ever Android phone, the HTC-made G1, but tougher to type on. The keys are packed tight and require a solid press to register. Along with a 5MP camera, there's a headphone jack, annoyingly missing from both the G1 and the MyTouch 3G. The rear has a sure-grip texturized rubber surface.
To minimize the number of hard buttons on the front panel and thereby create more room for the touchscreen, Motorola has removed the physical Send and End keys and moved them to the touchscreen, along with a Contacts touch key. To make the screen more readable and to save power, the display has an ambient light sensor to automatically adjust brightness. The battery savings goes to talk time — CLIQ is rated to get an impressive 7.5 hours
Even if CLIQ's physical amenities were awful, its exploitation and expansion of Android alone make it the new Android standard, setting a new paradigm for organizing the ever-increasing number of a cellphone's non-verbal communications. The philosophy behind the CLIQ and Motorola's MOTOBLUR Android-plus interface is that there's no reason to keep track of multiple social networking, messaging and e-mail accounts. When you initially set-up the CLIQ, it prompts you for all your e-mail and social-network information. It aggregates all the data from all these sources — all contacts with phone numbers, e-mail addresses, etc. (but maintains the original data within their individual applications) to create on big, super-meta file. For instance, you can choose one picture of yourself from all your accounts to be your caller ID photo to others.
You now get three onscreen dialog bubbles (at least that's what they look like to me). "Messages" collects all your incoming one-to-one messages, "Happenings" collects all social networking feeds, and "Social Status" aggregates all your personal status messages. Tap on one dialog bubble and you can swipe through all categories of communications, regardless of source, and you can reply easily via any source. For instance, if you get an e-mail, you can respond via text simply by choosing this option from a list in the message window. If someone writes on your Facebook wall, you can reply via e-mail. You can broadcast a blast to all your peeps on multiple networks, or just one. You can update your status on all your social networks at one time.
You also can opt to display dialog bubbles for individual Yahoo Widget RSS feeds. If you don't like swiping through sequential dialog bubbles — and you will — you can simply view them listed in a more convenient swipe-scrollable list.
All of these dialog bubbles can really crowd the home screen panels on the 3.1-inch screen, so Motorola has expanded Android's three home panels to five. Even still, any shortcuts you've dragged from the app menu silo to the home screen are apt to get buried underneath the multiple dialog bubbles.
MOTOBLUR also replaces Android's photo gallery with a far superior swipeable gallery with cool 3D transitions, not only from photo-to-photo but even as the accelerometer turns a photo to fill the screen. And of course you can broadcast one or multiple photos to some or all of your social networks.
Since MOTOBLUR's reorganization of the CLIQ's non-verbal communications is so radically different, it took almost the full allotted hour to grok it. But once we did, it was clear its radical efficiencies render mere talking an annoying inconvenience.
By DroidZine at 6:55 PM ON 09/18/09
Just wanting to point out that CLIQ is not the third-ever Android phone. HTC G1, HTC Magic aka MyTouch3G, HTC Hero, Samsung I7500 aka Galaxy and Huawei 8220 aka Pulse were introduced before CLIQ. In best-case scenario it makes it sixt Android phone (Not counting few more that were unoficially introduced).
By jbee at 7:26 PM ON 09/18/09
This review was fail.
By loconet at 8:13 PM ON 09/18/09
As it has been said already, there are more than 3 Android phones (even more if you count non-telephony devices). Please do a bit of research first.
By jay jay at 9:39 PM ON 09/18/09
man this place sucks tried to give it a second chance but this place = fail.
By izzy at 9:42 PM ON 09/18/09
Does it really seem like most android phones dont have "all" the features or better than the iphone?
This one seems to come up to the closest aspect since the cliq comes to 256 mb of ram, graphics accelarator and 5 Megapixel camera, SD card expansion, keybiard, a 3.5mm headphone jack and bam.
By Traveler at 11:36 PM ON 09/18/09
I don't even know what half the "services" listed are. The only reason to own a cell is emergency comunications.
By PulSamsara at 6:58 AM ON 09/19/09
"I don't even know what half the "services" listed are. The only reason to own a cell is emergency comunications."
Hey Traveler... 1992 called... they want you back by dinner... you know you weren't suppose to leave the neighborhood and wander into the future.
By Mihos at 8:41 AM ON 09/19/09
and the only reason to have the internet is e-mail... wait.... does Traveller work for AT&T?
By tiolawa at 8:37 PM ON 09/19/09
Ok this phone looks ok.. however the true future of android is les than a mont away the HTC Hero on sprint looks way cooler and has more features and doesn't have a slide out keyboard (those things have way to high of a failure rate for my taste)
By kizer at 2:28 PM ON 09/21/09
@tiolawa
I've had several phones with slide out keyboards, which does include the first Android phone the G1.
No problems with it and honestly all these new phones coming out without a keyboard are going to be very interesting to see since they are so community driven. I've tried to type on my highly modded G1 with only the touch screen keyboard and its not the easiest. Its very doable, but doesn't feel very natural at all.
By Bill at 12:56 PM ON 09/22/09
Looks like a very interesting and useful "phone" (can we call them phones any more?)!
By zenniekins at 10:40 AM ON 09/24/09
by the way this is the 3rd android phone for T-mobile. It may not be the 3rd android phone ever but for T-mobile yes. Cause if any of you noticed on the side of the phone it clearly says T-mobile. This should be interesting to play with. I am excited.
By Dezthegr8 at 11:32 PM ON 09/26/09
Its the 3rd generation Android OS, ive installed the mytouch OS on my G1 and its pretty bad ass. i cant wait to see this one
By mark at 2:41 PM ON 10/04/09
this phone sucks. I got a demo of this phone yesterday and it really sucks. I hope no one make a mistake by buying this phone. Its complicated, un-user friendly and no use. The phone quality sucks, you can barely hear the person speaking from the other side. It's update all and check all feature for face book, twitter and other other social networking sites really sucks. Hangs most of the time and for corporate email users this phone is a nightmare. Did you know that for corporate emails this phone syncs with your corporate email server and then it syncs with Moto BLUR server also to process your emails, tweets and social networking updates..
This is a security nightmare.
Keep away from this phone guys.
By Anonymous at 1:17 AM ON 10/13/09
jelek kali wak
By CEO at 2:39 AM ON 10/23/09
Motorola Cliq with Android OS gets a ZERO from me because the Android OS can not do a simple thing Palm OS has done for a decade, allow two way call recording which is essential for business users who take client/ customer calls while on the go. ZERO ZERO ZERO. Fot the phone today, 10/21/09 and it is going back tomorrow. Useless to me. My sucky Palm 680 which has crashed repeatedly for the 3 years I've used it is of more use to me than an Android OS phone.
By Indy at 11:57 AM ON 10/28/09
Ok, this phone looks good: the specs are good. The one who researches information wins!
We're talking serious here, guys. QUALCOMM, the cpu of this unit is the one responsible for introducing and almost perfecting 3G. So, as far as CPU, this is GREAT!
Android on the other hand is relatively new. But this OS is Linux based. Man, I own a Motorola A780...also a Linux OS phone. YOU CAN DO 5 THINGS AT THE SAME TIME. I think you can do more!!! Those who want to check phone numbers, dates, SMS texts, and even check notes you've made in the phone while talking to somebody can be done by it. Google? Yes, they literally changed internet. I think Gates of MS is concerned day by day about these developments.
Palm? I tried one before, even on ships. They (crew and guests) want to change their units to either iPhone or Blackberry. Lol! Palm was good BEFORE.
I'll buy this Moto CLIQ/DEXT MB220 as soon as it's available here.
Tada!
p.s. Please add here that Motorola has NO MAJOR BUILD QUALITY ISSUES. (HTC, SAMSUNG, NOKIA, etc....hohum)
By adam at 10:29 PM ON 10/30/09
you forget to mention htc touch pro 2
Just wanting to point out that CLIQ is not the third-ever Android phone. HTC G1, HTC Magic aka MyTouch3G, HTC Hero, Samsung I7500 aka Galaxy and Huawei 8220 aka Pulse were introduced before CLIQ. In best-case scenario it makes it sixt Android phone (Not counting few more that were unoficially introduced).
By blazterx at 6:06 PM ON 10/31/09
I got this phone pre-release from TMobile and absolutely LOVE it. It did take a few days to get used to the way the menus work. The only things it really needs is a flash for the camera and sometimes Motoblur mixes contacts up that have the same name..but I am sure there is a way to fix that, I just havent figured it out yet.
By coolfx35 at 9:15 PM ON 12/03/09
Just picked up my Motorola Cliq about a week ago. I was trying to decide between MT3G or the CLIQ and I went with the motorolla product. I had an iPhone and shadow previously and figured it is time to abandon HTC even though I have never had their touch screen before. I like the CLIQ for 5MP, voicemail player (no need to dial voicemail to listen to messages), qwerty keyboard (spacious, solid, comfortable after week of use), great interface and believe it or not its weight (i like my phone to be slightly heavier because I like to feel it in my hand). Compared to the MT3G the things I mentioned are not common characteristics for them both. I also like it better than myTouch because it is expandable to 32GBs of storage vs 16GB max for the myTouch which is a huge deal for me because I store a lot of files and music on my devices Smiley. I also like the fact that when you slide it out, the top part in the back has a sexy Moto logo and is lined with some sort of brushed metal I guess.... or w/e that is, but all I know it is metal and adds quality to the phone. The only things I am not happy about is its screen. It is 3.1 and is slightly smaller compared to the MT3G. The newest Motorolla (DROID) for Verizon does come with a bigger screen and the new 2.0 OS.
But because of all the other specs and parameters it makes CLIQ stand out more in my opinion, opinion based on device capabilities. As far as the OS of course I would like 2.0 or even 1.6 instead of 1.5 better. But I am certain the update will come sooner or later and willing to wait for it. This phone came out 3-4 weeks ago for god's sake and people need to chillax with some negative comments and other forums online. It will be worth waiting for the update, and some hacks/mods even better, so developers take your time please but deliver quality to me. Find me at http://www.Motorola-Cliq.com I share everything there.
By Ebabe at 3:18 PM ON 12/27/09
I am in love with this phone! So many features and you can sync all your emails, pictures, and social sites to this phone (all updates and email notifications appear on your screen). Great camera, video, visual voicemail, and voice calling features. Like the color, shape, and screen resolution on this phone as well. If you are looking for more than just talk and text then this is the phone for you. You will need to play with the phone to learn all the features. And wow does it have everything you need and more! Many apps to choose from, I think it is even better than the Iphone cuz you can use the keyboard or touch screen. I will have this phone for a long long time. Tmobile and Motorola scored with this phone!
By Ebabe at 3:37 PM ON 12/27/09
Blazterx:
Yes, if you have various emails and social sites synced to your phone you will get duplicate contacts since it's picking up contacts from all your accounts. You can always link your contacts. Just go to the contact you want to link and click it. Then press the menu button on the bottom part of the phone and it will give you an option to link, click on link contact and then find the duplicate and click. They will then be linked. If you have more than two duplicates you need to repeat the process til you do not have anymore to link.
=)
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Ebabe:
Blazterx: Yes, if you have various emails and social sites synced to your phone you will get duplicate contacts sin...More »