Motorola unveils its first Android handset: the Cliq
Motorola has unveiled its first smartphone running the Android system, the Cliq. While it has some neat features, it may not be spectacular enough to stand out in an increasingly crowded market.
The big selling point is a system dubbed Motoblur, which the firm rather ambitiously says makes the handset the “first phone with social skills.” The system means the home screen displays what appears to be a set of speech bubbles, though they are actually individual Android widgets.
Each bubble is constantly updated with feeds from a particular Internet service. While the bubbles can be customized (for example, adding news feeds from favorite Web sites), the default line-up is:
- Direct: A combination of e-mails, text messages, and direct messages sent through social networking sites. If the user’s contact book is set up properly, there’s an option to see all messages received from a particular contact, regardless of the service used.
- Happenings: All updates from friends and contacts who you follow on various social networking services.
- Status: Your own current status update for various sites. While there doesn’t seem much point in displaying this on the phone, the tool does allow users to post one update to multiple services.
- Weather: Because sometimes turning your head to the window is too much effort.
The main drawbacks of the system are that it may leave users overloaded with information. There’s also risk that concentrating so heavily on this feature may make the phone seem unnecessary to casual users who aren’t so bothered about social networking and other online communication.
The phone also scores highly by including the ability to use GPS to find a lost or stolen phone, or to remotely wipe a phone’s data in such situations, without any charge. However, the handset only ships with 2GB of storage memory, so it’s not that convenient for mobile music or video lovers.
The Cliq’s release is part of a strategy by Motorola to address its rapidly falling market share: sales in the second quarter of 2009 were virtually half those of the same period last year. Upon the announcement of those figures, the firm said it needed to concentrate on making its handsets stand out. One theory for the adoption of Android was that it allowed the firm to compete on features in the mid-range and budget markets rather than try to battle the best-selling phones at the top of the market.
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