Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Motorola Cliq Review: Most Customizable Android Phone Yet [Android]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/WPkTy96I-VQ/motorola-cliq-review-most-customizable-android-phone-yet

T3 got an exclusive review on the Motorola Cliq—in Europe, Dext—and they seem quite impressed. They go as far as saying it's a "new dawn" for Motorola. Here are the basic points:

The good

Motoblur: Motorola's combination of user interface and social service seems to be the winner. They say the widgets that allow you to customize the home screen are useful and quick, always updating live. For example, there is a messaging widget show the latest mails or texts right on the home screen, as they come in. The news widget collects information from several RSS at the same time.

"Happenings": It is the most interesting widget-connects to social networking sites and puts all status updates together in one single feed. It's not without problems, though, as it shows the updates from all your Facebook friends. You know, all the 457 you really don't know at all.

Contact book: Apparently, the address books collects information—addresses, emails, phones, photos, status, birthdays, dates, events—from all your contacts, adding the latest info from the social sites you are connected to. This sounds rather cool, as it seems you won't have to update your contact book ever again.

The bad

The hardware quality: It doesn't seem very good, according to them. Apart from the boring design, the touchscreen is "occasionally hit-and-miss," and the phone feels cheap. The 320x480 screen quality is good, however.

QWERTY Keyboard: The physical keyboard isn't good. ! Bad layo ut, and not enough spring keep them going back to the virtual one, which is accurate and feels good.

Conclusion

Despite the bad points, Katherine seems happy with the Motorola Cliq, saying it's a "rock-solid" performer, extremely customizable, fast, and great for social networkers. Go read her full review at T3. [T3]