Gadgetory

TechnoBuffalo here at a full review for you of the Motorola backflip which is the first Android phone available for 18 t Wireless this is going to set you back just about $100 after two-year contract and some mail-in rebates so let's go ahead and get started it is an Android phone sitting on top of Android 1.5 with Motorola's own UI skin called motoblur before we get into the nitty gritty and as I do with all of my phone reviews let's talk about call quality no matter what these phones do or don't do if they don't make good phone calls it's not going to be useful to you the radios in recent Motorola phones have been very very strong and the bakflip is no exception signal strength was very good I was even getting more bars with the bakflip than I was with a comparable AT&T device like the iPhone so it's quite strong and a modern radio call quality was very good no white noise no crackling callers even thought that I was on a landline and I experienced no dropped call issues with the back flip so if you're looking for something that's going to make good phone calls the back flip is going to be a very good device for you so let's dig in as to what makes this thing unique and let's talk about the form factor since this is really one of the big selling points or dislike points about the back flip on the front of it it looks like a typical Android device with motoblur it's got your motoblur icons your Foursquare your home and your back it doesn't have the typical Android buttons that you'd find on other Android devices for example here's what you'll see on all the Nexus One for example or typical Android devices that's going to be your button array Motorola has it a bit more simplified with motoblur so if you look at the phone on the right-hand side it's a little bit on the thick side if you flip it over there is a keyboard which is a bit weird with it's sort of inset 5 megapixel camera with LED flash and it's a bit of a segue the camera takes fantastic pictures 5 megapixels really come across quite nice on the phone here so that is this work well when you're using your phone if you take the keyboard and you flip it out it actually flips backwards hence the bakflip name and you get a full backlit QWERTY keyboard this keyboard is actually very easy to use the buttons are raised just a little bit a few weird things and quirks about it that do take some getting used to they're all lined up one after another there's no staggering on them as you find on some other devices the stagger makes it a bit easier to type on but here it's sort of one after another so it takes a bit of getting used to a spacebar is a bit small but you do get a very full size keyboard and generally with phones that slide out you lose finger access on this first row of keys because the sliding mechanism comes over but on the back flip that's not the case you actually can get full view I found myself actually using this quite a bit in this mode where you can actually sit and watch something you know I was actually looking at web pages are browsing you just scroll around it turns into an alarm clock if you like to use it that otherwise you can just get out of that and go home but it actually was nice and easy to browse in this moment something that I really like so from a design standpoint it's very quirky I think it's gonna be either love or hate it I kind of liked it I thought it was sort of unique I've seen so many phones they all have the same designs it's like to see something try a little bit different but that's not the only reason the back flip is unique because it's back flipping keyboard on the back it's got a trackpad or a backtrack as Motorola is calling in I can see that right there it works just like a touchpad on a laptop so the idea is that using the phone you can take your finger on the back and scroll along and scroll through pages and sort of get to different areas it's a great idea in practice in theory it doesn't work so well I can see I'm trying to scroll to the right and I keep you jumping over that one in the middle it's sort of accurate needs a bit of calibration you can double tap it open stuff up or tap it to close it I'm never gonna use it and I think it's sort of fragments the Android Marketplace a little bit more because developers have to actually develop applications that can use it I haven't seen that much utility for it but you don't have to use it just something that's there if you like so it's not a negative it's more of a positive if that's what you enjoy no one's certainly going to foresee when the phone doesn't require you to use it as well if you don't all your navigation is going to be exclusively with your finger or the d-pad down here on the keyboard so let's talk a bit about the operating system you may have seen Android or very familiar with it this is Android 1.5 which means this was the first version of Android I believe that had an onscreen keyboard as also is a version of Android that is not capable of running Google Maps Navigation the free turn-by-turn options so there are a few negatives to 1.5 you're not getting a lot of the features that you're gonna get on even a 1.6 or a 2.0 or 2.1 device now AT&T has said that this will be upgradable but as of right now the upgrade plans have not been released so you're going to be getting a 1.5 device I am NOT the biggest fan of motoblur it's a lot of social networking sort of tools and features that puts widgets on your home screen I find them to take up a lot of room you don't have a lot of screen real estate here with this 3.1 inch screen the resolution of 480 by 320 so I turned off most of the motoblur features ended up using just a stock Android build which was okay I do like Android I think it behaves very well I do wish this device has some sort of multi-touch support I know even one like the Droid hasn't touched support but doesn't ship with it you can download a third-party browser like a Dolphin Browser and be able to use pinch and zoom features you cannot do that here with the backflip it's a bit on the chunky side as well and that's probably due to that difficulty are also getting a very very nice battery the battery is 1380 million of hours and they claim we get six hours of talktime or thirteen point five days of standby time battery life was fantastic I was actually able to go two plus days on it the phone is a bit underpowered and it's underpowered for a professional power user I require a lot of utility out of my phone I'm always on the web sometimes text messaging watching video I need a phone that can really keep up with all of me and that's not the back flip but I don't think that's who the back flip is really geared at I don't think it's meant for the business power user this phone is going to be a perfect fit for you if you are a texture and you're looking for to step up from a feature phone to get a bit more features if you don't need all the power and utility of something running a much faster processor with much more RAM a sort of slots I guess below you know say something like like an iPhone or a droid or a Nexus One but above the the feature phone set it does a lot does everything in a standard Android build is gonna do but just does it a little bit slower so if you are looking for that middle ground this may be a nice compromise for you it's gonna give you a lot of things that you wouldn't get you know with your standard QWERTY feature phone so overall if I have to rank this phone on a one to ten scale which or one to five scale rather which of course I have to do things this is a review I'm going to give it a solid three I like the form factor it's gonna be a love or hate thing but I think it's unique it's fun it's a different sort of design that I've seen that I haven't seen before and I give Motorola credit for trying to innovate it's an emic processor lack of multi-touch bit smaller screen and use of Motorola blur and 1.5 operating system all took away from those points so you're going to love this phone if you are looking to upgrade from a feature phone and you want a bit more capabilities you're not gonna like this one if you're expecting a full power flow that can keep up with all of your multitasking and your power using this is not going to be the phone for you so if you meet one of those categories you can pick this phone up I think be relatively happy and you will have a Android device with a very interesting layout in your pocket anyway guys I'm John Renton Jeffrey TechnoBuffalo for all of your techniques and to create monetize your own tech blog get all your tech news interacting are built at social network be sure to check out TechnoBuffalo comm for exclusive updates give me a follow on twitter twitter.com slash john 4-leggers I'm John Rhett enger' and I'll see you in the next video bye bye