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T-Mobile USA announced Sept. 29 it will begin selling Motorola’s Cliq slider smartphone Oct. 19 to existing customers, with sales to the general public starting Nov. 4. T-Mobile put a $199 price-with a two-year contract-on Motorola’s first phone based on Google’s Android operating system.
Motorola’s first foray with Android features a 3.1-inch full touch screen with a resolution of 320 by 480 pixels, plus a slide-out, four-row QWERTY keyboard. The Cliq also features a full HTML browser with 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity. Bluetooth 2.1 is included, and so is a 5-megapixel camera with auto-focus, Instant Video playback and DVD quality. There’s a music player, a 3.5-millimeter headset jack and dual microphones with noise-cancellation technology.
Motorola introduced the Cliq at a September press event, along with Motoblur, a syncing solution that will debut on the Cliq.
Motoblur can sync contacts, social network posts and messages, photos, e-mails, and more from sources such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Gmail, LastFM, and personal and work e-mail accounts and post it all to a user’s home screen. Content is fed to the screen in streams, and when a contact calls or is called, his or her status and profile picture appear on the screen.
Contacts, log-in information, customizations and messages are backed up to a local Motoblur server, so lost or stolen devices can be wiped and the data restored on another phone. Using the Cliq’s integrated A-GPS, lost or stolen phones can also be located from the online user portal.
Still another sync feature is Motorola Media Link, which enables users to sync their phones, PCs and the Web, as well as transfer photos, videos and music.
Push e-mail and POP3/IMAP, such as Gmail and Yahoo, as well as MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) and SMS (Short Message Service), are supported. The Cliq measures 4.49 by 2.28 by 0.61 inches and weighs 5.7 ounces.