The Android You're Looking For: Moto's BACKFLIP Comes to AT&T

by Agen Schmitz on March 11, 2010

Motorola continues its assault on lower-cased letters with the BACKFLIP--its newest Android-powered mobile and the first using Google's smartphone OS on the AT&T network. Like the recently released DEVOUR for Verizon and CLIQ for T-Mobile, it runs Motorola's MOTO MOTOBLUR overlay to the Android OS, which places updates from Twitter, Facebook and MySpace into customizable bubbles on the home screen. It's got a 3.1-inch capacitive touchscreen display and full QWERTY keyboard that doesn't slide out, as most other keyboard-equipped smartphones do. Rather, the keyboard resides face-out on the back and flips forward (giving the phone its name). Additionally, the phone includes an innovative trackpad placed on the half of the shell that houses the screen, enabling you to use it to navigate the UI without having to take your hands off the keyboard when it's open. And CNet is a fan of the BACKFLIP's keyboard:

As far as the keyboard itself, we found it quite good. It's spacious and the square buttons are a good size, minimizing mispresses but we do wish they were a bit more domed like the Cliq's keyboard. The keys provide a nice springy feedback. The number and symbol keys (marked in blue) are doubled up with the letters (marked in white), and a nice, bright backlight makes it easy to see whether you're in a dark room or outdoors.

Another bonus of the back-flipping nature of the keyboard is its "tabletop mode," which allows you to easily use it as an alarm clock. Katherine Boehret at All Things D has more:

The Backflip is designed so that whenever it’s plugged into its wall charger or set at a 90-degree angle, it goes into Tabletop mode, showing a large digital clock with the local weather, date and options for setting an alarm. This mode also offers a button for watching the device’s photos in a slow-panning, Ken Burns-like slideshow, which is useful for sharing with friends.

It runs the 1.5 version of the Android OS, but Motorola and AT&T have promised (with no timetable) to update it to 2.1, which includes the Google Maps Navigation beta app free voice-guided directions (until then, there's always a subscription to the AT&T Navigator service). Also, oddly for a Google-powered phone, the default search engine from the search box found on the home screen uses Yahoo! rather than Google (determined by the corporate relationship between AT&T and Yahoo!).
Check out this very thorough video hands-on look (with comparisons to other Android-powered phones) from MobileTechReview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p2uWhgfQMw&feature=player_embedded
The BACKFLIP is currently shipping, and if you purchase it by midnight today (March 11) you can get free AT&T activation.
--Agen G.N. Schmitz