Our Verdict
When the Cliq do out right smart back in fall of 2009 , I was pretty impressed with it . It was the third Android phone to debut in the United States and the first from Motorola . What I liked best about it , though , was how much view Motorola put into its design . The low-cost Cliq 2 ( $ 100 with a two yr contract bridge from T - Mobile ; price as of 1/18/10 ) makes the first Cliq feel like a child ’s toy .
Grown-up Design
blueprint - wise , the Cliq 2 is sturdier with a more sophisticated look . It is a bit less plasticky than the original and feels sturdy in script . The face of the phone is black , but there is a chrome border surround it . The rubberdized batter cover keep the earphone from being completely bland - looking and allow for a nice clasp . The 3.7 - inch 854 - by-480 - pixel TFT showing takes up more of the real estate on the face of the phone , but there are the standard four touch - sensitive key below it : Menu , Home , Back and Search . measure 4.5 - by-2.4 - by-0.57 inches thick , the Cliq 2 is a slight chunky due to the coast - out keyboard .
This additional bulk is okay , though , because the keyboard is actually quite good . I fuck the original Cliq ’s keyboard with the dome - shaped samara and the Cliq 2 in spades better upon this conception . The Cliq 2 ’s keyboard sort of resembles a honeycomb ; in fact , a product coach told me its design is inspired by nature . Rather than private keys with outer space in between them , the keyboard is one solid while . It is sort of gruelling to explain , but perhaps you may see what I think from the pictorial matter . I was capable to quickly bang out a long message with no trouble at all . It is by all odds one of the better physical keyboards I ’ve used .
Brand new MotoBlur
The new MotoBlur user interface running over Android 2.2 is interesting . It is tone down a lot from the first loop of MotoBlur , which we see on the original Cliq and phones like the Backflip . Still , you necessitate to tweak the setting a bit or else the interface is social networking overkill . MotoBlur pilfer into your Facebook , Twitter , MySpace , LinkedIn , Google and other accounts . When you first set up the earpiece , MotoBlur will ask you to link these accounts . mind : do not link an account unless you check itevery individual 24-hour interval . Your phone ’s homescreens will become inundated with updates you do n’t care about and it will quickly get very annoying .
you may set three unlike homescreens for various facets of your life : employment , Home and Play . The multiple profile sort of prompt me of another phone on T - Mobile , the HTC - design myTouch 4G. MotoBlur has a few characteristic that can be used for both business and pleasure . For example , I really like the Calendar , which lets you create new issue and e - mail or text them to your friends or work colleagues . you could also well modify meeting times / location and see who is on your responder listing .
Other more job - oriented features include a preinstalled Quickoffice as well as the ability to power to do a distant South Dakota card wipe ( something IT department might get handy ) and remotely locate your speech sound if it is lose . consort to Motorola , SD card encoding will also be uncommitted via a software program update scheduled for later this class .
As for the fun hooey , the Cliq 2 number preloaded with Blockbuster OnDemand ( if you are one of the few people who opt for Blockbuster over Netflix )
Camera
The 5 - megapixel photographic camera is skillful , but nothing outstanding . I take a few other reviews that say really cocksure thing about the camera ’s simulacrum quality , but I see that all of my photos - taken both indoors and out - had a strange hazy quality to them . I ’m not certain what this is about ; I tried cleaning the lens , but this did n’t fix the trouble . The camera user interface is the same as what you ’d find on the Droid phone . It is n’t my favorite ( I really like the aboriginal Android 2.2 television camera port ) , but it is prosperous enough to habituate .
Like other MotoBlur headphone , you ca n’t sync your Picasa report to the phone . This believably wo n’t affect most people , but if you are a Picasa drug user ( like , uh , me ) , this is an annoying tweak from the native Android Gallery app .
Performance
A sure sign that the Cliq 2 is all grown - up , the phone skylark a 1GHz processor like many other high - end smartphones on the market . Interestingly , however , the Cliq 2 was one of the few telephone annunciate at the Consumer Electronics Show that isnotpowered by a dual - heart and soul processor .
I had some trouble picking up a 4 G signal in San Francisco . As we discovered when we tested the T - Mobile G2 , T - Mobile ’s HSPA+ electronic internet is only in sure pockets of San Francisco . ThePCWorldoffice in the South Park neighbourhood is sure enough not one of those pockets . But even 3 G velocity were tiresome over here . Using the FCC - approved Mobile Broadband Test app , the Cliq 2 accomplish download speed of 0.99 Mbps and upload speeds of 0.32 Mpbs . This is on the slow ending of the 3 grand spectrum . I frequently ran into net issues while I was link to the web internet browser or the App Market while I was test the telephone , too .
Like other T - Mobile Android phones , the Cliq 2 can be used as a fluid hotspot , allow you to colligate up to five machine . You also get calling over Wi - Fi , as well . This worked pretty well ; I was able to get my laptop , iPod and a camera associate to the connection .
Call quality over T - Mobile ’s web was average overall . Calls made indoors , in smooth surround , survive swimmingly . My caller-out on the other end of the line report that they could listen my voice clear albeit it sounded a bit remote . When I got outside though and made margin call from a busy city street recess , they could discover the chatter of the diners at the café behind me well than they could hear my voice .
Conclusion
When the first Cliq launched , I was impressed by how accessible it made Android . It was n’t a tiptop telephone by any means and give today ’s standards for super smartphones , it is on equivalence with a chinchy feature of speech speech sound . So now that Android is fully mainstream , Motorola had to make the next - gen Cliq accessible enough for the quotidian exploiter , but with the muscle to compete with other top notch phones out there . I think they mostly come after : The Cliq 2 is firm , has a multitude of entertainment and initiative features and is nicely designed . It is also improbably low-priced , specially for a 4 g-force 1Ghz phone running the latest reading of Android . The television camera is n’t gravid , however , so if you take a peck of pictures with your headphone , you might choose for the T - Mobile myTouch 4 G or the Samsung Vibrant , both of which have better cameras .
[ Ginny Mies is an associate editor for PCWorld . ]
