The Motorola Backflip smartphone brings a distinctive form to Android

Tom on January 07, 2010

There have been a few phones in the last decade that have offered truly distinctive form factors. Think the Nokia E70, or the LG EnV series, which were massively popular with the texting-teen generation, in the days PCIB (Pre Cheap iPhone & BlackBerry).

Devices to feature Google’s Android smartphone operating system have thus far been fairly regular in terms of form. Of course, at the time, the T-Mobile G1 (the original Android phone) had a cool form factor (a horizontal sliding QWERTY keyboard). But since that time, we’ve seen only a mix of candybar, slate, and slider style Android phones.

Today, Motorola is changing all that with the introduction of their third Android-based smartphone, the Motorola Backflip. It took me a while to understand the form factor, but the story goes like this. The Backflip folds – and when closed, it has the keyboard on the front and touchscreen on the back. To open, you slide the screen up and ‘backflip’ it around to face you.

Motorola assures us that the keyboard is durable enough to take a few knocks, but according to sources on the scene, the keyboard has worse travel than the flat-keyed, and more famous, Motorola Droid (the first ‘super’ Android phone which debuted in November)

The Backflip must have missed the Android 2.0 / 2.1 boat, as it currently includes Android 1.5 with the Motoblur skin. Don’t worry – Motorola’s Sanjay Jha says Android 2.1 is coming to each Motorola Android phone. The Motorola Backflip also features a 5-megapixel camera, WiFi, and a black and silver colour scheme.

Most likely, the Backflip will launch first on Canada’s Bell Mobility network, in the not-so-distant future. If an educated guess suffices on pricing (details aren’t available just yet), Bell should subsidise the Backflip for around CAD$99.