CES 2010
Phone Scoop had some time to spend with the new Motorola Backflip. This is one weird — though interesting — phone. It's a clamshell with a QWERTY keyboard, but rather than have the keyboard inside the clamshell, it is on the outside. Yeah, weird, right?
The fit and finish of the Backflip is actually very good. It resembles the CLIQ, but feels better all around. More metal, less plastic, and the prototypes on hand at the event felt sold and strong.
The front has a capacitive touch screen that is identical to that of the CLIQ. It feels good. The same three buttons are on the front fascia below the screen. They have good travel and feedback.
The hinge felt very solid, it was nice and strong. Swinging the Backflip open, you'll find the full QWERTY keyboard below the screen as on any other Backflip. The keyboard is somewhere between the quality of the Droid's and the CLIQ's. The keys are made of a similar material to the Droid's, but have more travel and feedback and more definition. They don't have quite the amount of definition that is on the Motorola CLIQ, but the design of the phone does allow the keyboard to be larger than most phones. The sheer size of the keys goes a long way toward making it easy to type on.
There are a number of dedicated keys on the Backflip that take you to the search app, Internet, messaging apps and so on.
There is a 3.5mm headset jack, microSD port and the usual Android smartphone specs.
One of the coolest features is the trackpad on the back of the screen. Motorola has essentially placed a trackpad (such as those found on laptops) on the back of the screen. Since there is no D-pad, this makes for easy scrolling and on-screen navigation when the phone is held in the open position. I found it to work well, and it was responsive.
The Backflip also runs MOTOBLUR, which Motorola promises it will continue to refine. MOTOBLUR is found on the CLIQ and is Motorola's social networking software. It seemed snappier on the Backflip, but we could have been imagining things.
The Backflip runs Android 1.5, just like the CLIQ. We're under the impression that this is linked to Blur. That is, the current version of Blur may not be compatible with newer versions of Android. However Motorola did promise that Blur and the Backflip would be updated to Android 2.1 later in the year.
In all, the Backflip is a better phone than the CLIQ. It will be available by the end of the first quarter from "a North American network operator", according to Moto. We know from the AT&T presentation this morning that that operator is definitely AT&T.
Here's a video tour:
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