Motorola Introduces Android Phones, Social Software

ruphus13 was among the readers sending word of Motorola's Android handsets yesterday, along with a "socially aware" application layer called MotoBlur. The Motorola Cliq is expected in a few weeks. T-Mobile is Motorola's carrier partner in the US. A second Android phone will be marketed in other countries under the name Dext. Reuters called the market's reaction to Motorola's announcement "muted." "Dr. Sanjay K. Jha, Co-CEO of Motorola and CEO of the company's Mobile Devices division, unveiled Motorola's Android platform play. ... Key to both of the phones, and key to Motorola's overall Android strategy, is a new interface and application layer called MotoBlur. It's focused on 'a single stream' for social networking features, software updates, messages, syncing, e-mails, videos, photos... The Cliq phone has a 5-megapixel camera, slide-out keyboard, 24 frame-per-second video capabilities, GPS, a headphone jack, an advanced browser from Google, integrated Exchange service, and Google roaming services including Google voice search, access to maps, Google calendar, and more. It also provides one-click access to Android Market and the thousands of Android applications there."

Comments

It's about time...

[gillbates]

Disclaimer: I work for Motorola. I'm giving up mod points to post this, as I think some people would consider it a conflict of interest if they knew.

That said, I've been long awaiting this change. I like the feature set - it approaches a consumer class camera (5 MP, 24 Hz video). It looks very functional, very usable. I'm not usually one to get excited about phones, but this looks quite good.

I've heard a lot of people bemoan the proprietary state of cellphone systems. Well, here's your chance to buy a Linux based phone, and show the manufacturers what you *really* want.

Re:very nice, iPhone's days may be numbered

[metamatic]

iPhone is nice even for all it's shortcomings, but Apple's total control fixation is going to hurt it in the long run and leave it as a niche device only for the cult of steve fanboys

The sad thing is, Apple is repeating exactly the same mistakes it made in 1984/85.

Back then, Philips and Sony came to Apple and asked about licensing MacOS. Jean-Louis Gassee told Jobs that Apple was so far ahead, the others would never catch up. So they kept an ironclad control over the Mac OS. And the entire rest of the industry went with DOS, and then Windows... and even though both were inferior, with Apple vs the entire rest of the industry, the end result was inevitable, and Mac OS became a tiny niche product.

Apple may be able to beat RIM at the smartphone game, but they'll never beat RIM, Nokia, Motorola, HTC, Samsung and Sony together, not in the long run. The iPhone will become the niche, and Android will become the 90%.