Motorola BACKFLIP Android Phone (AT&T)
- 3G-enabled, Google Android OS-powered smartphone with MOTOBLUR social networking, 3.1-inch touchscreen
- Unique reverse flip design reveals full QWERTY keyboard; BACKTRACK touch pad for navigation without using touch display
- GPS-enabled; Wi-Fi networking; Bluetooth stereo music; 5-megapixel camera/camcorder; microSD memory expansion; personal and corporate e-mail
- Up to 6 hours of talk time, up to 324 hours (13.5 days) of standby time
- What’s in the Box: handset, rechargeable battery, charger, 2 GB microSD memory card, quick start guide, user manual
Powered by the Android OS and featuring the socially minded MOTOBLUR overlay, the Motorola BACKFLIP for AT&T features an original reverse flip design, 3.1-inch touchscreen display, spacious physical keyboard, and unique BACKTRACK touch panel located behind the screen when the device is folded open–providing you hands-free navigation of the phone without having to touch the display. It also boasts super-fast Web browsing on AT&T’s 7.2 HSPA 3G technology as well as Wi-Fi networking with access to more than 20,000 AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots.
The unique BACKFLIP features a reverse flip design, spacious keyboard and BACKTRACK touch panel (see larger image).
With MOTOBLUR, updates from Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter as well as e-mail are automatically delivered to the home screen and fed into easy-to-manage streams. MOTOBLUR helps you to stay on top of both work and personal e-mail as well as keep tabs on all your Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter pals–all automatica
Rating: 
(out of 31 reviews)
List Price: $ 349.99
Price: $ 0.01
Different posts:
Review by M. Jecha for Motorola BACKFLIP Android Phone (AT&T)
Rating:
I’ve had the BackFlip since the day it was released and I’m having fun exploring all the functions. I’m so glad that I went to see the phone for myself rather than relying on reviews from the various geek sites. Several claimed that the phone is crippled and limited which made me quite apprehensive. However, for my needs, it fits the bill so far.
I had a short list of “have to have” features:
Good signal – Check – I’ve experienced better signal than my Samsung windows mobile phone
Touch screen – Check – pretty large, given the small phone size
Keypad – Check – Larger keys than my last phone, great for texting and browsing!
Decent camera – Check – 5.0MP baby! With flash! Again, better than last phone
Multi-window Web browser – Check – Up to 4, plenty for me. Changed home page to Google and I’m good to go!
Apps – Check – Market has large assortment and I’ve downloaded several already. Enjoying bar code reader and Amazon apps.
SD Expansion – Check – up to 32GB
I’m new to the Android, but I like the intuitive interface, plus Motoblur and the weather, calendar and message widgets, but I’m sure I’m just scratching the surface. I’m not one to indiscriminately download software all over the web, so open access outside the Market is not a deal breaker for me. The one complaint I’d have is that I’d like to get rid of some of the preloaded AT&T apps that I won’t use…or at least find a way to hide them, but I can work around that till I figure something out.
Bottom line, love the phone and I don’t miss the things that others have complained about. I’m a geek, but apparently not as geeky as some. It cost me less than the windows mobile phone I had, plus has better features, it’s lighter, faster AND IT’S NOT an iPhone, so it’s all good!
Review by Jennifer L. Hughes for Motorola BACKFLIP Android Phone (AT&T)
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I’d like to correct something another reviewer said. You can actually install applications from the web. I tested one of these phones out in the store and successfully downloaded, installed, and ran the Pandora application. The phone has a really nice interface. The touch screen seemed responsive and intuitive, and the navigation not difficult to figure out. Yes, like all other AT&T phones, this comes with some applications pre-loaded, but you can also expand the memory on this to 32GB, so it would be an exaggeration to claim that these few items affect the usability of the phone. I hope to receive the one I ordered this week and will leave a more in-depth review then, but don’t let a few gut reactions dissuade you from trying this phone for yourself.
Now that I’ve had it a few days, I have to say I’m very glad I got it. The only real issue I’ve had so far was in transferring my contacts. For some reason, when I tried to copy them all from my old SIM I only got one number per person and no other related data (birthdays, addresses, etc.). So I am still working on fixing that little issue, but the rest of the phone is great. I’ve installed a number of other applications with no problems, and for those of you concerned that you cannot install anything from outside of the Android market, do a little research and I’m sure you’ll find a way around that issue. Personally, I haven’t yet found a need for that.
As the the things I love, I’ll start with five customizable home screens. Having the ability to make this look however I want with the shortcuts, widgets, and background I choose is awesome, and puts this heads above the iPhone in my opinion. I personally always hated having to scroll through the multiple screens on the iPhone just to find the one thing I wanted. The ability to have everything about a contact show up in one place no matter how many different accounts that person has and different ways I communicate with them is amazing and another way I feel this beats the iPhone hands-down, and the “happenings” widget that displays it all real-time is designed to make it all very intuitive. The ability to make this into a nice alarm clock by opening it at a 90 degree angle is very cool and came in quite handy when traveling this past weekend… especially the fact that not only did it show the time, but the current weather/temperature conditions as well. The integration with all my various accounts (social, email, photos, etc.) is so useful and seemless that I already can barely imagine how I lived without it. The 5 megapixel camera and integrated flash are nice and can take some amazing pictures outside (and inside if you can hold your hands steady), and the ability to directly upload those photos to picassa, facebook, emails, etc. makes this feature even better. Having the camera integrated into the keyboard seems a little odd at first, but makes taking self-portraits so much easier, and having it record your location from the integrated GPS while taking the photos is very nice! The flash is crazy bright though, and the response time is a bit slower that I’d like so it probably won’t fully replace my digital camera, but as a phone, I never expected that it would. Battery life so far has been pretty good. I’ve been running numerous applications on it while testing it out this first week, but I would say the drain seems about right for that. I’m sure once the novelty wears off a bit and I stop messing with it every few minutes it will last much longer, but I would say the specs seem about right.
Overall, it’s a strong product. The interface can be a bit laggy at times, but so can all the other phones out there when you’re running as many applications simultaneously as I have been. The buttons and placement of things is taking some getting used to, but I have no real complaints over the design of the phone. If it weren’t for the extra work I’ve had to put in to get my contacts copied from my old phone I’d have given a full 5 stars. Honestly though, if you’re like me and have been waiting for a good alternative to the iPhone on AT&T that had actual buttons, this is a good choice. The Android OS is very user friendly and there are already lots of applications out there for you to try out.
—————Update 3/17/10——————
I have had to contact support to send back the phone after an overheating incident yesterday has rendered the product completely non-functional. I am hoping this is an isolated incident, but it’s very early in the release of the unit to tell for sure.
Review by M. Haines for Motorola BACKFLIP Android Phone (AT&T)
Rating:
First, I would like to say this phone is a great alternative to the iphone. Second, the QWERTY keyboard is great. The keys are responsive and they are big enough for my fat fingers. HA!
Battery issues – The reviewers who are having a hard time with keeping a charge, download Power Manager. Its free and it will switch your settings when your battery starts to drain. Any phone will not last if you have the screen at its highest brightness, and GPS on all the time.
Moto Blur – Its a social program on top of the Android system and it can be intrusive when you dont want it. If you dont like it dont pair any accounts with it and ignore it.
Non-market Apps – for the people worried about not being able to install apps from other sites other then the android market. Install the SDK and just install them that way.
Tethering – PDAnet, great app to run your laptop or desktop internet from your phone. Works, and try to do that with the iphone, you cant.
Yahoo as the default search widget – OOOHHHH…. NOOOO…. get over it. Use the browser and set the home page to google. Done! Now quit complaining.
Flash – This phone has been slated to receive the new flash 10.1 for mobile phones. The iphone is not.
Android 2.1 – this phone is getting upgraded. So get over the 1.5.
Finally, this phone rocks and if someone trys to tell you different just remember. They either have a iphone or want a Android phone and cant afford it.
Review by george for Motorola BACKFLIP Android Phone (AT&T)
Rating:
**Last updated on May 20**
First of all, I came to this phone from a Blackberry Pearl (my first smartphone). I think it’s important to mention that so you can calibrate my experience and opinions: pros are things that are better than the Pearl, and cons are things that are worse, since that’s what my experience consists of.
I wasn’t looking for much in a phone: a webkit-based browser, a gps, a full qwerty physical keyboard. If I wasn’t so sick of BB’s Browser, I might have gotten a Bold 9700, but the only phone on AT&T’s network that fit the bill was the Backflip. (Now that the Palm Pre Plus is out with the Pixi soon to follow there is a bit more competition.) Anyway, most reviews of the phone had the same bullet points: poor battery life, old version of Android, sluggish performance, non-removable AT&T crap, no sideloading, backtrack touchpad is pointless, nice keyboard. Most didn’t seem to care for the phone, but I noticed that none of the phones they preferred were in my price range. So I went to the store, tried it out, and since it seemed fine to me, picked it up anyway.
I have now had this phone for a couple months. There are a lot of reviews of it around the internet, so I’ll try not to rehash too much of what’s already in those reviews.
Where (some) other reviews are wrong:
* Battery life is almost as good as my Pearl. It was unusably bad at first, but since I did a factory reset, it’s been fine. Most likely you will want to charge it every 1-2 days.
* You can sideload on this phone, but you need to install the SDK on your computer and use adb to do it.
Pros:
* It’s pretty small
* Keyboard is huge, especially for a phone this size, and is made from a single piece of plastic without seams (resists water and dust better than BBs). Still, some doming in the horizontal direction would have been appreciated.
* Screen is pretty nice (160dpi); similar to the iPhone/Pre’s but not as good as, say, the Droid’s.
* UI is much snappier than the Pearl’s, so I am happy, but I guess that does not say much
* Gorilla Glass screen (no screen protector needed)
* Dual microphones for background noise cancellation
* Call quality/reception is fantastic, even in my apartment, where signal is poor
* I don’t use MOTOBLUR widgets, but the MOTOBLUR service itself is pretty snazzy (contact aggregation, linking, and backup); it is functionally identical to Palm’s Synergy.
* Remote wipe (via MOTOBLUR)
* It’s an Android phone (obvious, I know)
Cons:
* Cannot turn 3G or data on/off independent of airplane mode
* Cannot reorder any lists (folder contents, contact infos, bookmarks, etc)
* Browser UI could use a lot of improvement
* No status LED (led on micro-USB plug is not for notifications)
* Not as configurable as the Pearl (menus, email … basically everything)
* Only pushes from MS Exchange (typical for non-BBs, I think)
* Cons from other reviews (UI occasionally hangs, non-removable AT&T cruft, etc)
Conclusions:
For the price, I think the phone is pretty good. It’s not the cutting edge Android phone that nerds stuck on AT&T have been clamoring for, but it also isn’t priced like one. The novel design allows for a large keyboard, which is a big plus in my book (I can’t stand software keyboards). MOTOBLUR is also pretty great, and I think it’s something that’s only offered by Palm and Motorola. The phone’s flaws are not fatal, in my opinion, and in fact it performs better than I expected it to, based on mainstream news reviews.
Notes:
* If you don’t know what sideloading is, then it isn’t important to you.
* SD card is hot-swappable, but it’s in the battery compartment.
* The first con is mostly an issue when trying to conserve battery power in places with poor signal.
* My review had this wrong until now, but you can turn wifi, bluetooth, and GPS back on while in Airplane Mode, so there is a way to turn off the phone radio while still using these other services. This can help with battery life when you don’t have phone service.
* WRT the third con, if you have a contact with multiple phone numbers or email addresses, you cannot reorder them. My wife has something like 5 email addresses, and the one I use most is at the bottom; I have tried adding it again to bring it to the top, but that doesn’t seem to work. Folder contents will also reorder themselves occasionally.
* The browser is serviceable, and the rendering is as great as you’d expect, but the UI is poorly designed. Some commonly-used functions (eg, forward) are hidden in a lengthy submenu, while the redundant “Go to page” command gets prominent placement. I greatly prefer Opera Mini’s UI, even though its text reflow isn’t as sophisticated. Dolphin’s UI is also better.
* WRT push email, it’s not just email, but also social media-type things (eg, facebook). On BBs, EVERYTHING is instantaneous. It’s something I miss.
* The keyboard is recessed and only lightly domed, so if you lay it on a flat surface, it won’t scratch.
* I kind of like backtrack, though it’d be a lot more useful if I could use it in portrait orientation. Unfortunately, that isn’t physically possible. With that in mind, I think an optical trackpad like on HTC Desire or the BB Bolds would have been better.
* It would be nice to have Android 2.1, but it doesn’t add all that much, and in any case Motorola has announced Q3 2010 release (though they may very well miss that target).
* Right now, this is the only Android phone sold by AT&T, but if you just want Android, supposedly there are other phones coming, so you should wait if you want something more like the HTC Desire or Samsung Galaxy S (that is, if you like software keyboards and pretty screens).
* If I were buying now, I would seriously consider the Palm Pre/Pixi Plus as alternatives. Feature-wise, they are more similar than they are different.
Review by HDS for Motorola BACKFLIP Android Phone (AT&T)
Rating:
I have to admit that this phone took a bit of getting used to. I have had it now about a month and couldn’t be happier. My previous smart phone worked great as a phone and to text, but sucked at everything else. Anyway, the AT&T sales agent said this phone was targeted at the “online generation” with a lot of features for Facebook, twitter, email, etc. And it has all that. Motoblur is not just ad hype. It syncs it all. But not only is the Backflip great for all that stuff, it is a very capable business phone as well. It has completely replaced my old phone and my iPaq. And works better than both.
Anyway, here is my rating system. Great
Good 
Average 
Poor :/ Bad 
WEIGHT AND DURABILITY
The phone is fairly lightweight. Heavier than some other phones, but still easy enough to carry. It feels very well built and solid. Does not have that flimsy feel some other phones have. Nice and narrow. Fairly thin but a little thicker than some other texting phones.
BATTERY LIFE
Normally, I can go two days before charging. If I turn on the WiFi while at work, then I have to charge every night. I have never needed to charge the battery during the day. Motorola does not include a car charger, but it accepts micro-USB chargers which can be found inexpensively just about anywhere.
OS and SYNCING
The Backflip runs on Android. Completely different than Windows Mobile. It doesn’t have anything like Windows ActiveSync, but you can use Google sync. After a little work I installed Google sync which works very well. Syncing occurs over the air so no cables to plug in. I also like being able to attach the phone as a USB storage device. When you plug your phone into a USB port you can choose to attach as USB or charge only. It disconnects the SIM card when used as a USB but it has come in handy a couple of times. The SIM automatically restarts when you unplug the USB cable. You have to buy AT&T’s data plan, but the phone is WiFi capable, which speeds up internet browsing experience.
STORAGE: The phone accepts microSD cards. Mine came with a 2GB card included.
POWER ON AND SCREEN LOCK
The screen lock function is simple and works one handed. Press the power button, then tap on the unlock area. If you choose a security code, that also can be entered one handed as the numbers are large and easy to tap on. Unfolding the phone also turns it on.
PHONE
Leave it folded and it works like most other touch screen phones. Apps come up on the screen and you tap to activate. Tapping the phone icon brings up a very simple and easy to use dialer. One handed phone use is the norm. This phone is made for thumb dialing. The narrow size and large numbers make it very easy to use. On this screen you can also select recent calls, speed dial, or frequently called numbers. Sound quality is superb and as a speaker phone it ranks with the best. The volume can be turned up very high. (Sound gets a little gravely at full volume but still good.) I have not had any dropped calls. I have seen a lot of complaints about AT&T’s network but I can’t say I have ever had a problem. So I don’t know if this is something specific to the phone or the network. Anyway, I have not had a problem.
TEXTING and KEYBOARD
Unfold the keyboard and it makes a great texting phone. With my previous phone I found having a real keyboard, (no matter how small) dramatically increases the usability of texting. At least for me. You can develop a feel for where letters and numbers are that I just never got with the touchscreen keyboards. The only complaint I have is that the numbers are tucked up against the top and you have to be very deliberate when pressing them. Still this is a great keyboard. I like the feel and it is spread out enough that even my fat fingers have no trouble. The virtual screen keyboard is OK, but I find the real keyboard better.
APPS
There are plenty of apps on the Android Market, and finding and installing them is a piece of cake. I use spreadsheets a lot and I was able to download the same program for this phone that I used on my old phone. Editing documents is also easy using the keyboard. Plus there are all the usual pre-installed run of the mill apps: calendar, calculator, etc… They all work just like you expect them to.
TOUCHPAD?!? WTF?!?!
Speaking of spreadsheets, there is this strange little touch pad on the back of the touch screen that you use just like a touch pad on a laptop. I thought it was weird at first, but I have come to love it. It makes scrolling around a spreadsheet a joy. Much easier than swiping or using the arrow keys. I know some people who think it’s a waste, but I like it. Nice job Motorola.
MP3 PLAYER
It makes a pretty good music device. Sound is good but I thought it got a little gravely at close to full volume. Even with earbuds. I do like the AT&T radio. Actually works very well. Makes up for not having an FM radio built in. Ringtones are MP3 as well. Lots of apps for those.
CAMERA and VIDEO
There is a 5 MP camera and a video capture app. The camera works well and has the best flash I have seen on a camera phone. Prints from the phone pics are very sharp. The video seems to work well but I haven’t really used it that much. Still it’s neat to have.
MULTITASKING
You can run multiple apps on the phone while making a call. I did it just to see if it worked. I don’t know that this is a great advantage but you can do it. It can get confusing pretty fast.
VOICE DIALING
Motorola claims that this phone has voice dialing capability. I could not get it to work well enough to be useful. They could not get it to work well at the AT&T store either. I will miss voice dialing, as my old phone had pretty good voice dialing capability. Voice dialing on this phone just doesn’t seem to work well. Very poor recognition. (Just browse on AT&T’s support site and you can find a lot of other Backflip users with the same complaint.) I would rate voice dialing on this phone as bad. It is so bad that I think Motorola should not even pretend they offer it.
SCREEN PROTECTION
It has a glass screen. Nice, but because the phone flips backwards (leaving both the keyboard and screen exposed) I suggest you use a screen and keyboard protector. Being glass, the screen shouldn’t scratch easily but I feel better with a cover on it anyway. Motorola offers a two piece cover that works well for less than $10.00. I am using one that the AT&T store threw in for free when I got the phone. Does not seem to affect the touch screen sensitivity and keeps the keys up off the surface when you lay it down. I do not use a case. I just drop the phone in my pocket.
CLOCK
Another neat feature that is a bit different, is that when unfolded halfway and plugged into charge the phone becomes a bedside alarm clock. Not just a phone with an alarm, but a classy looking bedside alarm clock. Pretty nifty. It also has all the normal clock and alarm functions.
OVERALL
In summery, this is first and foremost, a really good phone. It also makes for a nice tool to manage your online stuff. A pretty good music player. A very capable business tool. A good game device. Nice camera and video camera. A very nice alarm clock. And a great texting phone. Once you get used to it, I think you will like it. The only feature that is below par, (especially for Motorola) is the voice dialing.
Anyway, this is a “different” type of phone. But different isn’t always bad. In this case it’s great. Good job Motorola.
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