Number 08: Motorola Cliq
The Cliq was announced a few weeks before CTIA, and we saw a lot of this intriguing handset at the show. While I used the Cliq only briefly, I already knew that I liked its design best out of all the Android phones. Like the Samsung Moment, it has a keyboard and a touchscreen. A physical keyboard is necessary, as the native touch keyboard on the current version of Android is far from perfect (as we found out in our review of the T-Mobile myTouch and the HTC Hero). I got some more hands-on time with the Cliq at CTIA and loved the keyboard’s ergonomics and bubble-like keys.
The Motorola Cliq will also be the first phone to showcase MOTOBLUR, Motorola’s skin for Android. In my quick hands-on tests, I found the MOTOBLUR interface to be clean, intuitive, and responsive. MOTOBLUR has a lot of cool features, such as a Happenings widget that gives you instant access to your social networks from the home screen. It also aggregates all your contacts and their information from various sources and displays them in one seamless client.
Number 07: HTC Droid Eris
Beginning Nov. 6, DROID ERIS™ by HTC will invade Verizon Wireless Communications Stores across the United States, bringing the power of the Android™ platform and the Verizon Wireless network together. DROID ERIS by HTC combines the popular Android platform with HTC Sense™, a user experience from HTC that makes it easy for customers to stay close to one another and create an individualized mobile experience tailored specifically to their needs.
DROID ERIS by HTC offers customers the opportunity to customize a seven-panel wide home screen with a wide variety of widgets designed to bring the most important information to the surface. DROID ERIS by HTC also includes the innovative “Scenes” feature, which allows customers to create multiple home screens, each with different widgets and shortcuts, to transform DROID ERIS by HTC from a “work” phone to a “play” phone with just a touch of a finger.
DROID ERIS by HTC also organizes interactions by person, which makes it possible to access text messages, e-mails, phone calls and even Flickr streams and Facebook updates from a single contact card. The unique HTC Sense experience found on DROID ERIS by HTC is supported by an array of the latest mobile features, including:
– 3.2 inch capacitive touch screen and trackball interface
– 5.0 megapixel auto focus camera
– Expandable memory with pre-installed 8 GB microSD™ card (up to 16 GB supported)
– Supports USB mass storage
– Bluetooth®, Wi-Fi and 3.5 mm headset connectivity
– Integrated GPS and a digital compass with a sensor that enables the phone to know what direction it is facing
– Smart dialer for simplified dialing by name, number or initials
– Full HTML browser with Flash Lite capabilities
– Seamless compatibility with Google™ services like Google Maps™, Gmail™, Google Search™ and more
