Motorola CLIQ

The Motorola CLIQ

The latest buzz on Android has been the release of Motorola’s new devices, specifically the Motorola CLIQ.  This phone seems to be the talk of the town these days and reasonably so.  Motorola has been suffering tremendously in the past few years of mobile sales as they get left in the dust for smartphones from RIM’s Blackberry devices and of course, the notorious iPhone.  The CLIQ is the first phone to bring Motorola into the Android world and they have definitely stepped up their customization of the platform.

First, let’s take a look at the specs on the CLIQ

• Full QWERTY slide-out keyboard
• 320 x 480 screen resolution
• 5MP camera
• 3.5mm headset jack
• MicroSD up to 32GB support
• 1420 mAh battery
• Qualcomm MSM7201A 528 MHz Processor
• 256 MB RAM/512 MB FLASH ROM

So the first selling point for me is the QWERTY keyboard.  It looks to me that Motorola has taken a step up over the T-Mobile G1 and put the keyboard in the phone with a much slimmer architecture.  As we are used to seeing, the processor and RAM specs aren’t that great, but I still maintain faith that someone out there is going to put Android onto a much more powerful machine at a decent price.  Also, many people are loving the idea of the 3.5mm headphone jack.  This is much better than the lengthy adapter shipped with HTC’s devices.

So what has everyone talking about this phone?  Motorola has introduced to the Android system an interface called MOTOBLUR.  This interface is used to keep all your contacts together along with their Twitter, MySpace and Facebook status updates.  This interface is similar to the HTC Sense interface used in the Hero.  The look of it is very impressive, but one question remains.  If this does really appeal to the younger market of smartphones, will it continue to stick using a platform that so far has only drawn in a more tech-savvy user base?  I think it has a lot of potential, and if the hardware can keep up with MOTOBLUR, then this has a real chance at breaking through and possibly revolutionizing the Android system.

The Motorola CLIQ will start pre-sales on October 19 and more than likely be released in November.  The phone will be available exclusively from T-Mobile with a black or white trim of your choice.  You can check out more information and take a test drive of the system on T-Mobile’s offical CLIQ website.

All that’s left to say is good luck, Motorola.