Reviews are coming in for the Blackberry Storm 2 and Motorola’s Android Cliq.
The Storm2 will likely be offered through Verizon in November for $200. The new model has Wi-Fi, a virtual keyboard in vertical mode, and will ship with 18 gigabytes of memory.
The CLIQ goes on sale at T-Mobile on October 19, 2009, for $199. It is a hefty slider phone, with a smaller screen than the iPhone or Storm, and comes with just two gigabytes of memory versus 16 gigabytes for the $199 iPhone. But the CLIQ claims six hours of talk time, an hour more than Apple’s device, and has a removable battery and expandable memory. It also has a five megapixels camera and runs Android.
It’s raining smart phones, says Walt Mossberg:
So far, the king of this new field, in my view, remains its pioneer, the iPhone.Apple’s phone has its limitations, but its design, usability and versatility have kept it ahead. There’s a well-equipped iPhone model available for as little as $99, and the platform offers a staggering 85,000 downloadable apps.
By comparison, there are around 10,000 apps for Android, 3,000 for the newer models of the BlackBerry, a few hundred apps for Microsoft’s 6.5 Windows Mobile software, and even fewer than that for Palm’s Pre and its soon-to-be released little sibling, the Pixi.
I’ve been testing two new contenders, and both represent second chances of sorts.
One is the revised version of the BlackBerry Storm, called the Storm2, from Verizon. The other is the first super-smart phone from Motorola, the fading former phone leader. It’s an Android-based model called the CLIQ, which will be offered by T-Mobile.
Mossberg says the super-smart-phone war is still in its early stages, with more and even better devices on the way. Apple will have plenty of clever competition.
In the past few days, many T-Mobile myTouch 3G and G1 handset owners received Donut, the 1.6 version of Google’s Android OS with multi-touch support, a quick-search bar and improved text-to-speech support.
As many as 30 Android-powered phones will be available by year-end, driving prices down. More than 10,000 applications are available through the Android Market. Here are 10 free Android apps and 10 reasons why Android 1.6 is going to make your Hero/Galaxy/Magic even better in the coming months.
