Motorola Flipout review
The clever design means you get a great QWERTY keyboard in a tiny package, but the screen isn't great and its price doesn't match its size.
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The small touchscreen’s capacitive interface proved responsive. Image quality isn’t brilliant, however, with only a meagre 320×240 resolution. As with most LCD screens, viewing angles are optimised for the screen’s usual orientation. When closed the Flipout’s display looks fine, but when opened it is rotated around and the viewing angles are heavily compromised. Contrast and colour are good, however, and we had no problems reading the tiny fonts in the application tray.
Motorola hasn’t customised the user interface much. It’s added three buttons that persist across all home screens: one activates the phone keypad, one opens your contacts and the middle circle opens the application tray. There are a few extra widgets for the home screen, and a couple of useful apps: Motolocator finds all your contacts with address and lets you pinpoint them on the map, while the Happenings app is a social media aggregator, keeping track of all your friends’ Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm updates.
The Contacts app has also been customised to blend with social networks, and allows you to merge contacts from different services. As well as a Motoblur account, which lets you back everything up on Motorola’s servers, you can add Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, Picasa, Photobucket, MySpace, Bebo and Yahoo! accounts, as well as Google and Exchange accounts and standard POP3 or IMAP email accounts.
Details | |
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Price | £216 |
Rating | **** |
Hardware | |
Main display size | 2.8in |
Native resolution | 320×240 |
Second Display | No |
CCD effective megapixels | 3-megapixel |
Video recording format | 3GP |
Connectivity | Bluetooth, WiFi, USB |
GPS | yes |
Internal memory | 150MB |
Memory card support | microSD |
Memory card included | 2048MB |
Operating frequencies | GSM 850/900/1800/1900, 3G 850/1900 |
Wireless data | EDGE, HSDPA |
Size | 17x67x67mm |
Weight | 120g |
Features | |
Operating system | Android 2.1 |
Microsoft Office compatibility | Word/Excel/PowerPoint/PDF viewers |
Email client | POP3/IMAP/Exchange |
Audio format support | AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, AMR-NB, WMA |
Video playback formats | MPEG4, H.264, WMV |
FM Radio | yes |
Web Browser | Webkit |
Accessories | headset, data cable, charger, replacement covers |
Talk time | 4.6 hours |
Standby time | 15.2 days |
Tested battery life (MP3 playback) | 24h 31m |
Buying Information | |
SIM-free price | £216 |
Price on contract | £20-per-month, 18-month contract |
SIM-free supplier | www.handtec.co.uk |
Contract/prepay supplier | www.buymobilephones.net |
Details | www.motorola.com |