Motorola Flipout review: Fair and square

Introduction

Motorola is banking heavily on QWERTY droids. The Motorola Flipout does look a bit of a shocker but fits squarely into the lineup. It’s tiny, yet offers better features than the Backflip, and social networking is its element.

Motorola Flipout official photos

The first thing to notice about the Flipout is just how small it is – a square 67mm on its side but no compromises were made when it comes to features. There’s a five row QWERTY keyboard (most big side-sliders have just 3 or 4 rows), a faster CPU than the Backflip and double the RAM.

Rather than ramble on with specs, here’s the list of pros and cons.

Key features

• Exceptionally compact QWERTY messenger
• Quad-band GSM and quad-band 3G support (7.2 Mbps HSDPA; 2Mbps HSUPA)
• 2.8" 256K-color 320x240 pixel capacitive touchscreen; multitouch support
• Android OS v2.1 with MOTOBLUR UI v1.5
• Excellent social networking integration
• Five-row QWERTY keyboard
• TI OMAP 3410 600MHz processor; 512 MB of RAM
• 3 MP camera with geotagging
• CIF (352 x 288 pixel) video recording @ 30fps
• Wi-Fi b/g/n; stereo Bluetooth v2.1
• GPS chip, A-GPS
• microSD slot, bundled with a 2GB card
• Accelerometer, proximity and ambient light sensors
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• microUSB port (charging)
• CrystalTalk PLUS noise-cancellation with a dedicated microphone
• Office document viewer
• Flash support in the web browser
• XviD support (but no DivX)

Main disadvantages

• Poor display quality
• QVGA resolution limits the choice of apps
• Unacceptable camera issues from a retail test unit
• Uncomfortable grip for taking pictures
• 17mm thick is a bit much
• No smart and voice dialing
• microSD slot under the battery cover
• No secondary video-call camera

The Motorola Flipout uses the latest MOTOBLUR UI and after playing with it for a while, we could barely find a place where the stock Android features didn’t receive some sort of SNS integration.

The phonebook wipes out any difference between phone contacts and online contacts. Even the music player does SNS: TuneWiki integration, Top 50 generated from Facebook and Twitter “blips” (you can send your own) and location-aware features too.

Motorola Flipout live shots • Who’s Big

A really cool feature of the music player is that it will automatically find the lyrics of the song playing and keeps them in sync like a karaoke machine.

The Motorola Flipout will be quick to find an audience. It offers great audio and some of the most impressive social networking we’ve seen in a package so small, it can make even the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 mini pro jealous.

It’s got a bigger screen than the X10 mini pro too – unlikely to impress owners of 4.3” monsters – but it’s actually the same size and resolution as the HTC Tattoo.

In a nutshell, the Motorola Flipout has impressive internals, so it’s the hardware that can make or break it – jump to the next page to see what we thought of it.