AT&T plans to increase its Android smartphone lineup by three. The Motorola Flipout, Flipside and Bravo mobile devices will bring the carrier's Android tally to eight.
AT&T Wireless, which has had the bragging rights these last few years of
being the exclusive U.S. purveyor of the Apple iPhone, is increasingly
embracing the iPhone's major rival-the Android operating system-as time ticks
down on that exclusivity contract.
At the CTIA Wireless trade show in San Francisco
Oct. 5, AT&T announced it will soon expand its Android portfolio by
three-bringing its tally to eight-with the addition of three Motorola phones,
the Flipout, Bravo and Flipside. The phones each run Android 2.1 and the latest
version of Motorola's Motoblur user interface.
The most affordable of the three is the
Motorola Flipout, which will arrive in stores Oct. 17 and will retail for
$79.99 with a two-year service contract and two-year smartphone data plan.
A fun-looking phone if ever there was one, the square Flipout pivots on one
corner, showing a 2.6-inch-square, five-row QWERTY keypad to be hiding behind
its same-size multitouch display. It comes in cheery color choices of saffron,
raspberry and lime, and in addition to an Android browser includes the full
suite of Google services, such as Google Maps and Gmail. There's a 3-megapixel
camera and 512MB of internal memory, and a MicroSD card slot that supports up
to 32GB.
With the newest Motoblur version, the Flipout syncs together updates from a
variety of social-messaging sites with e-mails and messages, for a
comprehensive social outlook. It also has a battery manager, for keeping an eye
on device life, a data manager, for backing up or remotely wiping data, and up
to seven home screens, customizable with widgets and applications.
The Motorola Flipside is scheduled to arrive in time for holiday shopping
and will retail for $99.99 with two-year service and smartphone data contracts.
A slider phone, it features a four-row QWERTY keypad and a 3.1-inch high-res
HVGA display that supports pinch and zoom gesturing. Beneath the display is a
laptop-style trackpad, offering users the option to keep their smudgy fingers
off the screen while navigating.
The Flipside offers push corporate e-mail and a corporate directory lookup,
as well as GPS device tracking and the
ability to remotely wipe the device clean, should it go missing. On a more fun
note, it'll sync social-networking updates with phone book and e-mail contacts,
and the company says the CrystalTalk Plus technology suppresses and filters out
background noise to make conversations clearer.
Finally, the Motorola Bravo, also arriving for the holidays, will retail for
$129.99, with the same contract parameters as the other two. The display's the
focus here, as it's a 3.7-inch full WVGA touch screen. On board are an 800MHz
processor, a full HTML browser with Flash Lite, a 3-megapixel camera with
digital zoom and auto focus, and one-touch access to a number of
social-networking sites.
The Bravo is a DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) device, which, per
AT&T, means that over WiFi it can "stream, store and share
entertainment with multiple devices around the home-including PCs, TVs and
other mobile devices."
"These three new devices each have a new unique take on the typical
smartphone," Alain Mutricy, senior vice president of portfolio and device
product management at Motorola, said in a statement. "Plus, the latest
enhancements to Motoblur not only allow users to easily stay connected with
their networks but better filter so they can focus on the people and
information that [mean] the most to them."
AT&T's exclusive hold on the iPhone
is expected to expire in January.
Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.
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