Google might figuratively be doing a backflip Thursday with news that AT&T will, for the first time, offer a mobile device based on the software and search giant’s open-source Android mobile operating system. Appropriately, the device is Motorola’s Backflip smartphone.
AT&T is the last of the big four carriers in the U.S. to offer an Android device. T-Mobile was the first in late 2008, followed by Sprint Nextel, and then Verizon Wireless. Though late to the party, AT&T said on its web site that it plans to add at least two more Android-based devices in the first half of this year — a new smartphone from HTC, and Dell’s first smartphone.
‘Original Reverse Flip Design’
The $99 3G/Wi-Fi Backflip, after a rebate and with a two-year service agreement, has a touch pad, a 3.1-inch HVGA touchscreen, and a flip-out QWERTY keyboard. AT&T described the keyboard as featuring “an original reverse flip design.”
By flipping the keyboard backward, the device can be set in tabletop mode for listening to music, looking at videos and photos, or acting as a digital alarm clock. There’s also a five-megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, a full HTML browser, and AT&T’s Backtrack. The carrier describes Backtrack as “a new way to scroll through the web, texts, e-mails and news feeds,” which the user can do without clogging up the home screen.
MOTOBLUR, Motorola’s constant-updating delivery service for social networking, is now Android-ized. AT&T said MOTOBLUR on the Backflip, as part of the “exclusive Android experience,” allows users to sync contacts, posts, messages, photos, status updates, and more from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Gmail, Picasa, work and personal e-mails, and Last.fm. For the socially busy user, MOTOBLUR also allows broadcasting status updates to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter all at once.
The social information is delivered automatically to live widgets on the…