Motorola Backflip

Fairly smart

by Hedirman Supian

05:55 AM May 28, 2010

A smartphone that bends over backwards for you - that should have been the tagline for Motorola's latest handset, the Android-based Backflip ($788, exclusively available at SingTel).

Indeed, it's quite a unique animal of a smartphone. It's designed like a clamshell phone, but not quite. The Qwerty keypad and display are placed on the external sides of the foldable phone, and you can't swivel the screen either. Yes, this means the keyboard is perpetually exposed.

It also means you get a spacious keyboard that's easy to type on. And I did prefer typing on the hardware keyboard to the cramped onscreen one on the 3.1-inch capacitative touchscreen display.

There's a trackpad of sorts behind the display, which lets you select and navigate items on the phone without obscuring your view on the touchscreen. It's a nice touch, but I often forgot the trackpad was there in the first place and opted to simply tap on the screen instead.

The Backflip runs on version 1.5 of Android (the latest smartphones sport version 2.1), and includes Motoblur which looks like a set of widgets that aggregates popular online social networks and email accounts. After the initial setup, you can use your Motoblur profile to transfer all your accounts to another phone that runs Motoblur. Its social aggregation sounds useful, but in practice, it doesn't work so well. For example, the widget that's used to post my status updates took a while to show my most recent updates.

The Backflip is not the best when it comes to performance. There were times when I would tap on the screen repeatedly, and it'd remain unresponsive. And then, it would execute my multiple taps in a flurry as if to catch up. A faster processor would have been a good inclusion.

Elsewhere, the hardware seems decent. It has a 5-megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, and a microSD slot. You also get the usual 3.5G, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity options. HEDIRMAN SUPIAN

http://www.todayonline.com/Tech/Techreviews/EDC100528-0000048/Fairly-smart