The Motorola Flipout launched last week, bringing a whole new design to Android 2.1 smartphones: completely square. Is this quirky mobile design genius or suicide? We grabbed one this morning to find out, so read on for our hands on photos and impressions.
We’ll be honest: the Motorola Flipout could easily replace the LG GW620 as our favourite low end Android messaging phone. It’s absolutely tiny, but still a delight to use. Though the Motorola Flipout’s 2.8-inch screen is low res (320×240), it’s colourful and responsive – there’s a working on screen keyboard that’s more than usable.
Of course, the Motorola Flipout’s pop out keyboard means you won’t need it much. Unusually, it’s hinged only on one corner, rather than along a whole edge, so rotates out when pushed. The hinge itself was extraordinarily shaky, but this is a pre production sample so we’d hope Moto fixes that in time: however, the QWERTY keypad on the Motorola Flipout is bouncy and great to use.
Motorola Milestone XT720 hands on photos
The Motorola Flipout uses the company’s Motoblur social networking skin, which sits Facebook on your homescreen, but it’s been updated to Android 2.1 from the Motorola Dext‘s 1.5 bake. It’s not the latest version of Android (2.2) but does mean you should be able to run plenty more apps, including Google Maps Navigation. We didn’t detect much lag while flipping through the homescreens and menus, so hopefully the skin doesn’t cause much slowdown.
The Motorola Flipout should be hitting our shores shortly. You can bet we’ll be chasing a final version for a full review, but in the meantime, gorge yourself on our hands on photos right here.
Out Summer | £TBC | Motorola
