Motorola BACKFLIP Review
In brief
With some intelligent and novel ways to interact and view the features, the Motorola BACKFLIP is a user-friendly smartphone.
Look and Feel
The front of the Motorola BACKFLIP looks pretty much like a traditional smartphone, with a decent 3.1 inch touchscreen, curved corners and a simple silver case. However, the BACKFLIP can do just that – you can flip it back so that the screen sits above the full QWERTY keyboard and the Backtrack pad on the screen’s reverse is revealed. The main benefit of this ability is that you can easily put the phone down on a surface, with the screen flipped back and facing upwards, and sit back to enjoy a movie or listen to music. The phone without this ability is similar to the
Motorola DEXT.
The layout of the phone means the QWERTY keyboard remains on the outside, whether the Motorola BACKFLIP is open or closed. This is slightly unusual for a smartphone and may take a while to accommodate when you first make a call. The keyboard itself, though, is easy to use with nicely defined keys and a row of shortcuts for accessing various features. And the keyboard is locked when not in use so you can’t accidently press anything.
The Backtrack pad on the back of the screen basically offers you an extra way of navigating the Motorola BACKFLIP. You can opt to use the large pad for selecting items – rather than pressing the touchscreen directly.
Special features
To complement the size and resolution of the screen, combined with the flip mechanism so you can stand the phone on a table to view images, the Motorola BACKFLIP has a decent camera with video. You can take photos on the 5-megapixel camera which has an LED flash and automatic focus or shoot some footage on the video option, and then watch it back on-screen. Sharing any still or live footage is easy too thanks to the Motoblur interface which features applications for the likes of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Photobucket. You can also share images via MMS and email on your Motorola BACKFLIP.
The Motoblur interface, which is also found on the
Motorola Droid, is perfect for helping you manage all your various contacts. You can synchronize your contacts, text messages, emails, photos and more from various places including Twitter and Gmail, and have all updates received on your home screen. You can sort these streams of updates also – as well as back-up your applications and information securely online, so they are always available even if you lose your BACKFLIP handset.
Other features of the Motorola BACKFLIP include the Android Market which has thousands of applications for you to add to your mobile. Similar in concept to the App Store on the
iPhone 3G S, the Market means you can customise your phone. The internal memory can be expanded to store all your applications, images and contacts, to up to 32GB via a memory card.
The Motorola BACKFLIP looks set to be a popular new edition to the smartphone market. Its unique design and navigation options combined with good features like GPS and document viewer, make the BACKFLIP an appealing phone. More details on the BACKFLIP are due to be available soon and once they are, we’ll make additions to this review.