Motorola Cliq

This Android cell phone was released in November 2, 2009. T-Mobile is selling the Motorola Cliq at the price of $199. This Motorola phone is available in titanium and winter white colors.

Specifications

Camera
The camera is covered by its lens. It is a 5-megapixel camera.

Display
The display screen measures 3.1 inches. This touch screen display comes with a resolution of 480×320 pixels and 262,000 colors. You can rotate the phone or rather move the phone sideways in your hands and the display will rotate as well. This is made possible by having an accelerometer. With the physical keyboard, a touchscreen keyboard ala android style is also featured. The onscreen keyboard can come to use when using the phone without having to open the QWERTY keyboard.

Design
It has an attractive design just like the Cliq MB200. Controls on the phone include three buttons just below the display. These buttons are for to go to the home page of the phone, to go back to wherever you originally were on the phone and one button is for the menu. With the menu controls, you can activate the display and open the shortcuts that you have set up such as shortcuts for adding folders and widgets, changing the wallpaper, opening Google search and notifications, and accessing the Settings menu. There’s a pull-tab for the main menu just as found on the other devices.

Controls
On the outside of the phone, the exterior, there’s a volume control (which can be used to make the sound louder or softer), there’s the handy ring silencer switch and lastly, there’s a micro USB port that can be found on the left side of the phone which is used to either charge the phone or for synching purposes. Much like phones of its type, the Cliq also has a 3.5-mm headset jack which is located at the top-by the side of the phone. On the left side are where the camera control such as the shutter and there’s also the power button which can also be used to lock the phone or also known as the locking key. The key when clicked will open up the menu that can activate the Wi-Fi, airplane mode, GPS, and Bluetooth. There’s a spacious keyboard in an ergonomic way on this phone. It has raised-up keys and is fast at responding when they are clicked. The keys have large letters imprinted on them and they are brightly lit. Some of the keys double up as numbers as well and there are also some that double up as symbols. There’s also the Alt button that enables users typing on the keyboard to access the punctuation key, search button, shortcut for onscreen symbols, back and return keys, and a spacebar. Some of those keys also act as letters on the keyboard. There’s a toggle with a big OK button on the keyboard that can help when scrolling the menus.

Phone Features
This Android phone comes with the new MotoBlur user interface that lets you sync your social media, contacts, and e-mail. It has a full QWERTY keyboard. It has two more home screens and what you can do with these home screens is add folders, get shortcuts from the main menu, have a widget that displays tips on how to properly utilize the phone, a weather application and news feeds. The main home screen will be displaying your messages and news from MotoBlur. With this Motorola phone, there are shortcuts to access your contact list, there’s a Talk control to access the dialer, your recent calls list and frequent calls list, and a speed dial option. The dialer has square buttons and those can be used to add shortcuts to the voice dialer and contacts list. Settings on the phone include adjusting the display’s features such as the brightness, clarity and more. Also the font size for the email can be set up as well. For security purposes, you can set up your own code for the phone as well as a different code to lock the phone while on standby. Codes can be in the form of alphabets and numbers or patterns. This phone also features proximity sensor.

Other Features
Purchasing this mobile phone, comes a couple of accessories which are an AC adapter, a USB cable, 2GB microSD card, a stereo headset and reference material for this phone.

Reviews

“The Cliq, with Motorola’s Motoblur software for gathering information from social networks, is a decidedly consumer-friendly phone that makes the Droid feel deadly serious in comparison. I’m not saying the Cliq can match the Droid feature for feature, though, and it’s social bent may not be for everyone, though.” (Engadget, 2009)

“In a perfect world, Moto would’ve kicked off its Last Stand by coming to the plate with an absolute beast of a phone — massive processor, massive camera, massive display, the works — but market realities and carrier demands have meant the middling CLIQ and DEXT are the first to get time in the spotlight. We think this is just the beginning, though; hardware will inevitably improve, and BLUR — a system that is currently right in principle and wrong in execution — will evolve to become a much more usable platform. How do we know? We don’t — but this is a humbled company with its back firmly pressed against the wall. They’ll adapt and succeed, or they’ll die. It’s really that simple.” (Engadget, 2009)

“Is this the phone that Motorola needs to bring it back into the smartphone race? It could be. They were smart enough to know that just doing another Android phone wasn’t enough in itself, so they pulled together and created all this social networking glue to bind the experience together. It’s cohesive enough to call the Cliq a different experience from other, similar devices like the Sprint HTC Hero, and is a pretty damn good first step in a possible Motorola comeback.” (Gizmodo, 2009)