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Review: Motorola CLIQ

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Menus Calls/Contacts Messaging  

Calls

The dialer application is slightly different on the CLIQ when compared to other Android phones, but not too much. It can be launched from a dedicated software button on the CLIQ's home screen. There are no physical send/end keys. The main dialer has a large numeric keypad in the middle, with four tabs along the top and three buttons at the bottom.

 

The top tabs take you to the dialer, recent calls, frequently called numbers, and your speed-dial/favorites list. The default action when you launch the dialer is to search through your contacts. It's annoying that you have to turn the phone sideways and open it up to actually type in this search box. It doesn't appear to be possible to launch the software QWERTY on this screen.

The three buttons on the bottom to let you open the contact list, call whatever number is on the screen, or open up the voice dialer. If you can, I highly suggest you set up favorites/speed dials or make use of the voice dialer. Here's why...

Contacts

The way MOTOBLUR incorporates every single contact database you have into one, massive list makes the address book almost unusable.

Twitter is the main culprit.

As I mentioned earlier, I follow about 2300 people. Guess where they ALL wind up? Yep, in my CLIQ's address book. That's on top of the 1600 or so Gmail contacts I have, and hundreds of Facebook friends. Long story short, depending on how well MOTOBLUR integrates duplicate contacts, you could be seriously up a creek without a paddle. Search becomes the ONLY way to sort through this disastrously huge list of contacts. Also, the way MOTOBLUR combines everything is completely hit or miss. Sometimes it finds all the right email addresses, phone numbers and such for a person and puts them in one place, and other times you'll have five different versions of the same contact. BLUR is not perfect.

I asked Motorola directly, and there does not appear to be a way to remove those you follow on Twitter from the contacts application. If you follow lots of people, the best way to approach the contacts database is to set up groups to filter out the most important contacts. You can also open the address book and then choose to look at only your Gmail contacts, or Facebook contacts, etc. Or, just give up and use search and the voice dialer to find the people you want to reach out to.

There are some things about the contact application that I absolutely love, though.

For example, when you open up a contact card for someone, you'll see all the ways to reach out to them (call, email, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.). You'll also see the most recent messages they've sent you and/or the most recent status updates they've posted. This makes the address book a lot more interactive and fun.

 
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