Update: Unfortunately I received an email today telling me that the seller that offered the Flipout at this bargain price hasn´t enough Flipouts in stock and is unable to order more. This is really sad as I was looking forward to play with a low cost mid end Android handset made by Motorola. I couldn´t find a similar deal to buy a Flipout, yet. If I do, I will get one to fulfill my promise of reviewing and tweaking this little device.
When I first read, that Motorola would make Android phones, I was quite excited. At that time I had three Motorola phones, all EZX and thus running Linux: A first generation device (E680i) and two second generation ones (A910).
Android, as I understood back then, would make these phones a lot more interesting, as there would be tons of native software – while on EZX it was more about J2ME.
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| Motorola Flipout (Copyright: Motorola) |
The CLIQ/DEXT, Motorola´s first Android phone, wasn´t to interesting for me, as I already had a similar, not too different, HTC made phone: The T-Mobile G1.
Then, later, Motorola came up with the first Android 2.0 phone, the Milestone. I was ready to throw money at this device – but then, out of a sudden, the locked bootloader story spreaded and I was turned off. So turned of, that I didn´t buy it, and in fact, no other Android handset since the G1. I didn´t like the design of HTCs later phones, and while I really liked what Motorola came up with (especially the Milestone2 and the Defy), I always felt like: Android isn´t fun without custom ROMs – back than I already was a heavy CyanogenMod user.
Now, today, I ordered a Motorola Android phone. It´s an ARMv7 powered phone and it was really cheap: 99€ including shipping without any contract. As you might guess, this isn´t a Defy, Milestone, Milestone XT720 or even Milestone 2 – it´s the Motorola Flipout, a phone with decent specs, as long as you don´t mention the screen. But hey, it´s small and has a hardware keyboard which seems to be just big enough, and since my G1s hardware keyboard is broken since CeBIT.. well, I just had to buy it.
I will test the device, and if Motoblur is too annoying, I will “deblur” it and tweak it as far as possible without a custom ROM – JIT, Apps2SD and so on.
I am quite excited how this Motorola phone will feel when I´ll hold it in my hands. If it is astonishing and I notice that I can live without the latest Android release I might be tempted to get another Motorola Android phone – or start / support a petition to persuade Motorola to leak open bootloaders for the phones they discontinued ( = no updates to later Android releases) way to early.
