The mobile landscape continues to be revolutionizes on an almost regular basis as mobile manufacturers continue to invent and innovate. Time and again these tireless creators put new spins on old ideas and even come up with all-new ones cut from whole cloth, in order to change the game and perhaps gain an upper hand in the competitive game of mobile manufacturing and service. New features continue to be integrated well into new models, thanks to advancements in technology and manufacturing. This leads manufacturers and service providers to try new things in putting together packages that will cater to the demand from the users who live ever-more-fast-paced lives.
Motorola is a longtime veteran of the mobile manufacturing game, and has tried just about every trick in the book along with inventing a few new ones. Their new Cliq XT is a bit of both, as it improves upon the original Cliq model with a sleeker design and better multimedia features, all presented in a solid package that boasts a 5-megapixel camera, great call quality, 3G and Wi-Fi capabilities, multitouch support and community and discovery features. Its small screen size and older Android system resulting in occasional sluggishness aside, it presents itself as a worthy successor that manages to raise the bar a bit.
The Cliq XT seems at first glance to have merely removed the Cliq’s physical keyboard in favor of a full screen, but upon closer analysis the XT’s thinner, lighter, taller design becomes more readily apparent. It’s much more pocket-friendly given its slimmer frame without the slide-out keyboard, and the whole thing feels good in hand with a textured back plate with a feel similar to that of the BlackBerry Bold 9000. Its screen is a 3.1-inch HVGA capacitive touch screen with 320×480 pixel resolution, although its sharpness isn’t up to par with the Droid and Nexus One’s, which admittedly are both higher-end devices. Text may look tiny and display quality may suffer a bit as well though.
Among the things that could’ve been improved with a bigger screen is the onscreen keyboard, which ends up a little cramped and renders composing text messages time-consuming. Thankfully, the great Swype typing system – which works by letting you drag your finger from letter to letter to type – works surprisingly well with a great level of accuracy. It’s a good alternative to the Android keyboard, although typing out longer words can get tricky. On the other hand, the cramped screen does come with multi-touch support.
Other features that help the Cliq XT stand out are a revamped music player, which now streams music via ShoutCast radio, uses SoundHound to identify songs, and features integrated YouTube or GoTV. Connectivity is also one of the Cliq XT’s strong suits, with Motoblur software managing contacts, email, and calendar entries into a master list. 3G, roaming, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 support are also present, strengthening the model’s general connectivity feature set. Rounding this all out is a great Android HTML WebKit browser that has supporet for running multiple windows and Flash content via Flash Lite 8.1, as well as a variety of Android apps including Gmail, Google Talk, google Maps and the Quickoffice suite.
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