Posts Tagged ‘DEXT’

Review: Motorola DEXT / CLIQ – another social networking play with MotoBLUR

dextIt seems that 2009 is the year of the comeback handset. Palm saw its Second Coming with the Palm Pre (review). Sony Ericsson relaunched with the Symbian-powered Satio (for what good that did them) and a new slogan. And Motorola, after years in hibernation and having completely missed the smartphone boat, unveiled its first Android-powered device, the Motorola DEXT as it’s known in Europe or CLIQ in the states.

The DEXT isn’t just any old Android handset, either. Shunning the standard out-of-the-box Google OS experience, the device introduces MotoBLUR, the handset maker’s own social networking UI layer and service. A unified address book that syncs Google, Facebook and Twitter contacts, updates pushed to the home screen, support for photo sharing via various third-party sites, with all of a user’s settings and data backed up on Motorola’s own servers.

It’s closest in its thinking to Palm’s Synergy feature, but also reminiscent of INQ, HTC’s Sense, Vodafone 360, with a bit of Nokia’s Ovi Share thrown in. In fact, as 2009 draws to a close, social networking integration is fast becoming just another tick-box requirement rather than a headline feature outright. On the other hand, no one has yet to perfect the concept, Motorola included, so there’s still plenty to play for. But before we dive into MotoBLUR, let’s take a look at the phone’s hardware.

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