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Android This Week — Look Out, Symbian; UK Gets Motorola's Dext

James Kendrick — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:00:39 +0000

There’s no question that Android is the hottest smartphone platform right now. Handsets running Android are being announced almost every day, and industry analyst Gartner projects phenomenal growth for the OS. Android, which currently claims a mere 2 percent of the smartphone market, will grab a smooth 14 percent of the market by 2012, Gartner predicts. This will see the operating system pass the BlackBerry and the hip iPhone in market share. Most of this share will be taken from Symbian, as Nokia continues to slide.

Also, Motorola last month announced the Cliq as its first Android handset, and that outside the U.S. the phone would be called the Dext and released later. It turns out later really means sooner, as the Dext went up for sale in the UK this week. The Cliq will be available in the U.S. on Oct. 19 on the T-Mobile network.

Meanwhile, Acer’s previously announced and later canceled Android netbook that dual boots with Windows XP is back on again and will soon be hitting shelves, according to the company. We’re not sure why anyone would want a netbook that runs both OSes, but Acer didn’t ask us. This would be the first netbook running Android, so we’ll watch it closely to see what the advantages might be over conventional Windows. Extended battery life would be a plus in the cheap notebook market.

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Android This Week: Motorola Cliq Pre-Orders Near, MID Teaser

James Kendrick — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 13:00:20 +0000

It’s been quiet on the Android front this week, as the industry took a much-needed rest following the frenzy surrounding the unveiling of the Motorola Cliq phone earlier this month. The biggest news this week was a leak of some internal T-Mobile promotional materials that pegged the Cliq pre-orders to begin Oct. 19. T-Mobile is the U.S. carrier that will offer the Cliq to customers, apparently starting on that date. There is no official word on when the Cliq will actually start shipping, but Motorola has repeatedly said it will happen before the holidays.

Plus, a Chinese PMP maker has a teaser for what appears to be an Android mobile Internet device to be announced this week. The Ramos Digital MID looks to be the same MID that had previously appeared as a concept by chipmaker Rockchip, and it’s expected to support HD video playing. This would be the first non-phone device running Android — and likely the first of many.

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Android This Week: Motorola Unveils the Cliq

James Kendrick — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:00:34 +0000

The big Android news this week, without question, was the launch of the Motorola Cliq, a smartphone that sports a sliding keyboard and is optimized for social network interaction. The Android platform, of course, is designed to make the most out of a continuous web connection, and Motorola has designed the Cliq to be a social media champ. The phone, which will be dubbed the Dext outside of the U.S., will appear on the T-Mobile U. S. network later this year.

Also unveiled was the cloud-based MotoBlur, which can be used to build a totally integrated interface to multiple social networks, like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. The Motorola Cliq uses MotoBlur to make it easier to handle multiple social network accounts from one screen.

In the meantime, while the term app store tends to conjure up images of the one from Apple, that’s due to change. The Android Market has quietly passed the 10,000-mark in terms of the number of apps available.

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Hands-on: Motorola’s First Android Phone

James Kendrick — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:00:56 +0000

Motorola has followed through on its promise to enter the Android smartphone market, unveiling the Cliq, a small phone with a sliding QWERTY keyboard. The company has added its own home screen magic, called Moto Blur, that graphically integrates all user messaging accounts. Messages received appear on the screen no matter how they were sent, whether via email, text message or social network.

We cornered a Motorola rep backstage at the Mobilize conference just before the phone was announced and shot a quick video of it in action. It invokes images of an iPhone, although one with a nice keyboard that slides out of the screen. The keyboard feels really good to use, and the performance of everything is very fast. The phone will be available later this year with T-Mobile in the U. S.

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Mobilize: Don't Neglect the Network

Katie Fehrenbacher — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:28:25 +0000

It’s a less glamorous topic than the flashy unveiling of Motorola’s first Android phone, the Cliq, but the reality behind what makes devices like the Cliq possible is the high-speed network that connects it. Rick Keith, senior director of Strategy for Broadband Access Solutions at Motorola, who sat on a panel discussing high-speed networks at our Mobilize conference following the Cliq unveiling, went as far as to call his panel “like following up Madonna.” However, he pointed out, the network is doing the heavy lifting and will be a chief driver of innovation and new services.

Chetan Sharma, president of Chetan Sharma Consulting, pointed out that ubiquitous high-speed broadband, which could one day offer speeds like 50 megabits everywhere, will be driven by browsing, peer-to-peer networks and video. As Om has said before, consumers have an insatiable appetite for bandwidth, and if the networks are available, consumers will find ways to use it and developers will create innovative services to fill it. At those kind of “ultraband” speeds, “everything that can be connected will be connected,” said Ken Denman, CEO of Openwave Systems. “We’re at a state where you put a cell phone base station anywhere, and it gets filled up.”

All of that bandwidth will require a whole lot of capital — billions and billions of dollars, said Abhi Ingle, VP for Industry and Mobility Application Systems for AT&T. The kinds of networks needed for that level of bandwidth are not a commodity that are lying around somewhere, Ingle said. It will be very expensive.

Of course, high-speed ubiquitous broadband won’t come from one big network. Ultraband will require both wired and wireless networks and different standards and technologies like Wi-Fi, WiMAX, cellular, Ethernet, and so on. But blending all these networks seamlessly should be the objective, emphasized the panel. “The user doesn’t care what network they use,” said Motorola’s Keith. AT&T’s Ingle said the telecom company is focusing on blending together a hybrid of networks to offer this seamless type of service.

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Hands-on: Motorola's First Android Phone

James Kendrick — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:00:03 +0000

Motorola has followed through on its promise to enter the Android smartphone market, unveiling the Cliq, a small phone with a sliding QWERTY keyboard. The company has added its own home screen magic, called MotoBlur, that graphically integrates all user messaging accounts. Messages received appear on the screen no matter how they were sent, whether via email, text message or social network.

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