Can CLIQ Android device save Motorola? Short answer: no.

Motorola’s devotion to the Android OS is an interesting gambit. As a politically-minded friend of mine is so fond of stating “men worship the rising sun”. While Androids star is definitely on the rise, it is no guarantee of success for Motorola. The flagging manufacturer still needs to release great handsets. Last nights unveiling of the CLIQ device is Motorolas first official Android release. Is it good enough?

The device:

So what’s the CLIQ like?

Physically, it’s a smartphone. What else can I say? It shares the majority of it’s features with mostly any other smartphone on the market: it has 3G and Wi-Fi connections, so that you can browse the Web on its 3.1-inch touch-screen display. It has a 5MP camera, a 3.5mm headset jack and music player, and it comes with a 2GB microSD card, which you can increase up to 32 GBs. It also comes with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. As an Android device, it has one-touch access to the entire suite of Google mobile services, and has support for the majority of IM and messaging clients. Is there anything in there that you haven’t seen before?

So what’s new? Well, it comes with a new user interface that has been developed specifically for Motorola, called MOTOBLUR. This UI is specifically designed to combat the limited screen space available on a mobile device. Since most smartphone owners will use multiple communication channels on their device (IM, social networks, SMS, email, etc.), they can spend a good bit of time jumping from app to app. The idea behind MOTOBLUR is to have all of these services update to the homescreen neatly, at the same time. Rather than having you jump from application, you can just scan your screen and pick up everything you need.

What we think?

So far, so samey. It’s the same problem as any smartphone entering the market is going to encounter. They’re all so SIMILAR. Touch-screen, mobile Internet, music player, headphones, QWERTY keyboard (full/slide-out/touch), applications, blah blah blah. When’s the last time you saw something striking and original from a smartphone?

Ok, there are slight differences between each model. But apart from the quantity of fart-noise apps available on your app store of choice, there’s very little reason to choose one model over another. Even this new UI, MOTOBLUR, doesn’t provide anything to get excited about. The Palm already has a function that does pretty much the same thing. And if you want to access all your visual communications channels on an iPhone, you can just put all of the apps on your homescreen. You’ll lose, at the most, about 5 precious seconds of your life tapping those buttons. Is that good enough a reason to buy the CLIQ? No.

If Motorola was hoping to attract customers by releasing a differentiated and interesting smartphone, it has failed. The only thing most manufacturers can hope for when releasing devices now is brand-loyalty, and Motorola has spent the last few years eroding that.