T-Mobile Motorola Charm, with Android, Arriving This Summer

Motorola introduced the Charm July 7, its third smartphone for T-Mobile to run Google's Android mobile operating system.

Arriving this summer, the Charm is a bit iPhone 4 meets Palm Pixi meets Motorola Flipout, with rounded edges, a slim physique and a 2.8-inch QVGA touch-screen display - reportedly Gorilla Glass, like the iPhone 4's display - positioned over a four-row qwerty keypad. It measures 98.4 by 67 by 11.4mm.

To enhance the user experience, Motorola has included an updated version of MotoBlur, which it says enables users to better customize the phone.

"MotoBlur filters can be selected from a single social networking account, contacts, group or messaging account so that users can select only the information they want to stream live to the Happenings and Messages widgets," Motorola explained in a statement. "Users can move and resize preloaded home screen widgets to personalize up to seven screen panels for an even more custom experience."

MotoBlur also works to back up phone data - averting a crisis should the Charm go missing - and to allow users to control power settings so the battery can last longer.

Another Moto feature is the Backtrack navigation pad on the Charm's back. Similar to a laptop trackpad, it lets users to navigate Web pages, for example, with pinches, scrolling and swishes, but without their fingers blocking the view.

"Being social with friends and family comes naturally for T-Mobile customers, and we think mobilizing their social experiences should be effortless," Saj Sahay, T-Mobile's director of product management, said in a statement. "With the new Motorola Charm and enhancements to the Android and MotoBlur experience, we're bringing more social skills to our broad portfolio of Android-powered smartphones."

WiFi and Bluetooth 2.0 are on board, along with Adobe Flash, an FM radio, a 3-megapixel camera with Kodak Perfect Touch technology, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a compass and A-GPS technology. With Android 2.1, users additionally get the full suite of Google's mobile services, including Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail and quick access to the Android Market. Corporate e-mail accounts are also supported.

There's a one-touch button for uploading social media, and CrystalTalk Plus technology, which, with a second microphone, is said to improve call quality.

The Charm comes with 512MB of internal memory, and a 2GB microSD card - though up to 32GB of additional memory are supported. On WCDMA networks, users can expect up to 300 minutes of talk time - which jumps to 405 minutes on a GSM network.

And because there's apparently little that Motorola didn't throw at this smartphone, it also features a Moto Phone Portal - a way to manage data on the phone through any browser, using a WiFi or USB connection.

Neither Motorola nor T-Mobile released pricing information for the Charm, though for now we do know that it'll arrive in rather attractive shades called Bronze and Cabernet.