Design and Call Quality
You'll like the phone least when it's off, because the CLIQ is a briq. It measures 4.5 by 2.3 by 0.6 inches and weighs a hefty 5.7 ounces. It's made of black plastic, glass (on the front panel), and darkened chrome accents around the curved sides. The bright 3.1-inch, 320-by-480-pixel touch screen is a little small, compared to the HTC Touch Pro2's 3.6-inch, 800-by-480-pixel panel, and the T-Mobile G1 and myTouch 3G's 3.2-inch screens. That said, touch response was stellar on the capacitive screen. There's a built-in four-way accelerometer and proximity and ambient light sensors for the display. The slider mechanism felt solid. Sliding the front panel out reveals a four-row plastic QWERTY keyboard with a five-way control pad on the left. Typing was quiet, comfortable, and totally accurate; I made few mistakes.
The CLIQ is a top-notch phone. It's a quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and tri-band HSDPA 7.2 (900/1700/2100 MHz) device with Wi-Fi (but no Wi-Fi-enabled T-Mobile @Home calling). Voice calls sounded excellent in both directions, thanks in part to the powerful earpiece speaker and dual-mic setup. Reception was average, and generally matched a T-Mobile G1 I had on hand. Calls also sounded clear through a Plantronics Voyager Pro Bluetooth headset. The speakerphone was loud and powerful. Battery life was average at 9 hours and 28 minutes in EDGE mode.
Social Networking and MotoBlur
The CLIQ integrates social networking and messaging more deeply than any other phone we've ever seen, and it's the most heavily customized Android phone ever. Motorola's MotoBlur service is something many software and hardware vendors have tried to create but haven't been able to: an integrated, cloud-based interface for all of your online communications. If you're into Facebook or its ilk, MotoBlur is a real eye-opener.
MotoBlur brings together social networking updates, contacts, and other information from various sources, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Last.fm (yep, the streaming radio site), plus the usual news, weather, and other bits of info. In addition to all this, MotoBlur backs up your contact, calendar, and other phone data online, and offers an import tool from Outlook, Outlook Express, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, and Thunderbird. You can add additional accounts easily with the Accounts icon in the Applications menu.
MotoBlur displays all of this data in a colorful array of widgets on the CLIQ's five home screen panels. The Social Status widget updates your status on any or all social networks, and displays recent status updates. The Messages widget handles text messages, e-mail, and social networking direct messaging. Happenings displays recently uploaded photos, events, and other items from your contacts. A separate Happenings icon in the Applications menu displays all photos and events (not just unread ones like the Happenings widget). MotoBlur is also plumbed into the phone's built-in PIM apps; for example, if a contact changes their phone number on their Facebook profile, the CLIQ picks it up and changes it in the phone's address book.
With few exceptions, it all works like a charm. In my tests, it picked up my Facebook e-mail inbox and let me send and receive messages; Twitter and Facebook updates showed up quickly as well, showing photos of each person. The widgets' design wasn't always ideal; seeing one update at a time on the home screen, with half of someone's Facebook photo, looked a little silly sometimes. I located my handset within a few moments using the desktop MotoBlur location tool, which finds lost CLIQs via GPS, and was treated to an on-screen map. Sadly, the tool doesn't ring the phone; forget using it to find a misplaced CLIQ behind the couch. On the plus side, if the phone really is lost, you can remotely wipe its data. I did run into the occasional bug; the "Home" app crashed several times with an error dialog, though the handset never seemed deeply affected as a result.
Those that are concerned about cloud-based MotoBlur falling victim to the same problem the T-Mobile Sidekick did during its well-publicized data-loss fiasco have no need to worry. MotoBlur doesn't have the same problem the Sidekick does, because the CLIQ stores data locally (just like all other smartphones). The Sidekick has a constant two-way sync constantly and keeps some data local and other data in the cloud, which is why some contacts and info disappeared when Danger's server died.
Messaging, Web Browsing, and Apps
The CLIQ is a capable all-purpose smartphone as well. Like the G1 and MyTouch, the CLIQ has a 528 MHz Qualcomm MSM7201A processor, with 256MB RAM and 256MB of internal storage. I would have preferred a faster processor. The CLIQ felt responsive in most situations, but there was occasional UI lag.
For e-mail, the CLIQ hooks into Gmail, Yahoo, and Windows Live Hotmail, and integrates with Microsoft Exchange servers for corporate e-mail. All messages appear in the CLIQ's universal inbox. It also syncs Google and Exchange calendar and contact information, and comes with a Microsoft Office document viewer. Plus, all PIM data is backed up in your MotoBlur account. For instant messaging, the CLIQ includes one app for AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and Windows Live Messenger accounts, while another app handles Google Talk separately.
Android's stock WebKit browser rendered Web pages accurately, with the exception of the usual gaping holes instead of Flash content, and the zoom controls were easy to manipulate. Download speeds in 3G mode averaged 810 to 850 kbps, which is good for a smartphone on an HSDPA 3.6 network.
Plenty of location-based services are also on board, including TeleNav-powered voice-enabled turn-by-turn directions, Google Maps with Street View, and Google Latitude for locating friends, along with the aforementioned location and remote wipe features. TeleNav had trouble understanding my voice specifying a destination, but it locked onto my location in about two minutes and delivered crisp, loud, accurate driving directions.
As with all Android phones, you can browse, buy, and download from a selection of over 7,000 apps in Android Market. Motorola may also introduce new widgets in the future as new services become popular.
But while Motorola insists the highly-customized CLIQ is compatible with all third-party programs, the CLIQ can't handle Google's standard OS updates. The CLIQ comes with Android 1.5, and can't be updated to Android 1.6 ("Donut") at the time of this review. CLIQ owners who want the integrated camcorder app and improved Android Market must wait for Motorola to issue its own package.
Media, Photos, and Conclusions
The standard-size 3.5mm headphone jack makes using your favorite earbuds a snap. MP3 and AAC tracks sounded clear and crisp over Motorola S9-HD Bluetooth headphones. The CLIQ displayed large album art thumbnails, and you can buy new music tracks over the air from Amazon MP3. You can also discover new music through imeem or Last.fm and stream it through the handset.
Video playback is especially attractive: a 3D wall indexes all your videos, and there's a timeline you can swipe with your finger. It wouldn't downscale a 720p HD video for the CLIQ's LCD, but it played other 3GP and MP4 videos, as well as YouTube, smoothly in full screen mode.
The 5-megapixel camera includes auto-focus, but lacks an LED flash. Test photos had a slight haze over them that's typical of tiny cell phone lenses. But overall, the CLIQ's camera performed well both outdoors and indoors without excessive noise. You can send photos straight to Picassa, Photobucket, Facebook, and MySpace. Recorded 352-by-288 videos played smoothly at 22 frames per second, and were well lit. I would have liked to see a VGA recording mode to match the iPhone and HTC Touch Pro 2, though. There's a microSD card slot hidden underneath the battery cover. My 16GB SanDisk card worked fine, and Motorola throws a 2GB card in the box to get you started.
The Motorola CLIQ's MotoBlur service truly sets it apart. If you use Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter at all, there's nothing quite like the CLIQ for you. If you don't intend to use MotoBlur, what's left is a solid Android smartphone that's a little more stylish than the T-Mobile G1. Our previous Editor's Choice, the BlackBerry 8900 is still a good pick for simple, no-nonsense mobile computing and e-mail. The HTC Touch Pro2 will still appeal to Microsoft loyalists who want a huge keyboard and high-res screen. But for anyone with a social networking account, pit the MOTOBLUR-enhanced Android against the TouchFLO 3D-enhanced Windows Mobile and it's no contest: Motorola's combination just works better.
Spec Data* Price as Tested: $199.99
* Megapixels: 5 MP
* Processor Speed: 528 MHz
* Bluetooth: Yes
* 802.11x: Yes
* Bands: 850, 900, 1800, 1900, 2100, 1700
* Camera: Yes
* High-Speed Data: GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA
* Operating System: Other
* Network: GSM, UMTS
* Service Provider: T-Mobile
* Web Browser: Yes
* Screen Details: 320-by-480, 262K-color TFT LCD capacitive touch screen
* Screen Size: 3.1 inches
