Motorola unveils Cliq Android phone

Motorola's first Android phone will be called the Cliq, and will launch on T-Mobile USA 'later' this autumn.

The sliding 3G phone has a 3.1-inch HVGA touchscreen display, a full Qwerty keyboard and a 5MP autofocus camera.

It is the first device to run Motoblur - software that automatically streams from social networking sites to the phone's home screen.

Socially adept

Updates to contacts, posts, messages, photos and more are gathered together and synced from sources including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail, and work and personal e-mail accounts. Motoblur then automatically delivers these updates to the home screen in easy-to-view streams, with no need to open and close individual apps.

A single contacts tab gathers together all your email, IM and networking contacts, and handily shows their latest status updates.

The Cliq comes with GPS, a 3.5mm headset jack, a music player with pre-loaded Amazon MP3 store application, Shazam, iMeem Mobile, and a pre-installed 2GB microSD memory card with support for up to 32GB of removable memory.

Not just another Android

Like other Android devices, Cliq has multitasking capabilities and offers one-touch access to Google search by voice, Google Maps with Street View, YouTube and Picasa. Easy access to both personal and corporate e-mail, calendars, and contacts is supported by Exchange Server and Gmail.

E-mail and contacts are also supported by Yahoo, Windows Live Hotmail, and other POP3 and IMAP e-mail services. It also combines instant messaging support for Google Talk, as well as AOL, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger.

Motorola Cliq will be available exclusively to T-Mobile customers this autumn in two colours, Titanium and Winter White. Pricing will be announced at a later date. Here's a blurby website with more info and images, and a fairly impressive demo of the Motoblur system.