Announced earlier this month, the CLIQ is seen by many as Motorolas first decent entry into the smartphone market – indeed, its first decent phone since the RAZR. Today, T-Mobile USA has announced a release date for the Android, along with the price.
Lest we forget:
But first, let’s take a quick look back at the device itself.
An Android OS bearing smartphone with a full touch screen AND a slide-out QWERTY, the CLIQ has the 3G and Wi-Fi connections you would expect from a smartphone. You can browse the Web on its 3.1-inch touch-screen display, take pics or video with the 5MP camera, and listen to your music through a 3.5mm headset jack. It comes with a 2GB microSD card, which you can increase up to 32 GBs.
The release date and prices:
The CLIQ is available for pre-sale for existing T-Mobile customers from Oct. 19 to Nov. 1. The release date was leaked almost two weeks ago, but the pricing info is new. If you’re eligible to buy one, it comes at the reasonably low price of $200. This, it would seem, is a special introductory price for T-Mobile customers – the company intends to have the device for sale in stores all over the country in time for Christmas, but there’s no word on what the price will be.
Cyanogen hiccup?
There had been some worry, after the recent Cyanogen incident (see our full report here) that the CLIQ might be shipping without Google mobile applications. As it turns out, the CLIQ will be a Google Experience device – so you can expect to see service like Google Search by voice, Google Maps with Street View, YouTube and Picasa.
What we think?
Nice phone, and the price is right. I had a discussion with a friend recently about the future of Android vs. iPhone – and I think that CLIQ is that future. The iPhone will probably always be the elite device, but if you’re looking for something a bit cheaper that does pretty much all the same stuff, look no further than Android. There will be so many Android devices on the market within the next year that there will be at least one device to suit any mobile customer. Apple may have its “there’s an app for that” thing going on, but Android will soon have “there’s an Android for that”.
