Motorola’s New QWERTY Phone Can Do Backflips
Dr. Sanjay Jha introduces the Motorola Backflip
The newest Motorola phone might initially look like a Cliq, but the Backflip has a new trick behind it. Literally. You can actually navigate the phone with a finger on the backside of the Motorola Backflip. Taps and double-taps are supported as is mouse-pad style navigation. In fact, the entire phone has a backwards look and feel to it because the QWERTY keypad flips in the opposite way you’d expect — the keyboard is always exposed as a result.
The display looked vivid, and the keys appear generous in size. But aside from the new navigation method, this largely looks like a modest refresh of the Cliq to me: Android 1.5, 5-megapixel camera, 528 MHz CPU, 3G, Wi-Fi and MOTOBLUR.
On a different note, Motorola’s Sanjay Jha stated that the Cliq would be updated to Android 2.1, but no time frame was provided. If that’s the case, I expect the same upgrade to apply to the Backflip. No carrier partners were announced yet, but the price-to-be-determined phone will be sold in the U.S. as well as other countries around the world before April.
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Personally I am worried that the 528 MHz processor within this phone isn’t going to be able to match the next gen of Android powered handsets from HTC, on top of this I am also skeptical that feeling a QWERTY keyboard underneath your fingers whilst making a call is going to have any positive response from consumers.
The screen also appears to be incredibly finger print and smudge happy, and the overall look of the phone is a little bit plasticky. Couple that to the V shaped keyboard – which although is a nice change to all the samey handsets lately, has no real point to increasing user functionality and thus could be seen as a gimmick.
But we’ll have to wait and see, i’m certainly not expecting anything new in terms of OS, but the overall chassis of this thing will be something special i’m sure – possibly even innovative and inspiring to other manufacturers.
Innovation? Sure. Clouded inpiration? Definately not.
Thanks for the post :)
Regards,
Jakk