Motorola unveils CLIQ smartphone, social MOTOBLUR service based on Android

September 10, 2009 | Paul Boutin | Comments | |

motorola-cliqMotorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha is giving attendees a look at Moto’s upcoming Android-based smartphone onstage at GigaOM’s Mobilize 2009 conference this morning in San Francisco.

He’s showing off MOTOBLUR (all caps, sigh), a phone service based on Google’s Android mobile operating system that will be out in time for Christmas. You can guess most of the features — it pulls all of your messages from e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and other services out of the apps and directly into a feed on the main page. It’s this feed that takes it a step further even than the Palm Pixi, announced just yesterday, which also seeks to target urban youth with advanced social networking features.

There’s no need to open or close any apps to access that information. You can also send out status updates to all your networks directly on the home page.

A feature Jha stressed is automatic backup and remote data wiping. If your phone gets lost or stolen, you won’t lose your address book or photos because the phone can be remotely commanded to erase your personal data.

The first MOTOBLUR-powered phone, called the CLIQ, will be available from T-Mobile in time for the holiday gift season. The CLIQ has a 3.1-inch touch-screen display, a five megapixel auto focus camera with video capture and playback at 24 frames per second. It also has a music player with pre-loaded Amazon MP3 store application, Shazam and iMeem Mobile.

For gadget geeks, Engadget’s speed-blogging team has a more technical report.

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About the Author, Paul Boutin

Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Sharon Falewhale
    The Motorola announcement of Motoblur comes off like they think they are gods gift to the world. It's just arrogant. They didn't even invent 90% of the stuff they are parading around. They just put a bow around it and act like the world should get on their knees for Motorola. That a mindset these Motorola people continue to display. I'm learning in both politics and business that arrogance just comes with the Chicago territory.