Latest Phone to Join the Droid Ranks - Smartphone Development

It looks as if the battle between Google and Apple will only intensify now that Google’s invading Apple’s turf by offering its competitively priced new smartphone to AT&T, which continues to be the exclusive carrier of Apple's iPhone in the U.S. The new phone, deemed the Motorola Backflip, will be AT&T’s first smartphone offering that runs on Google's Android operating system.

Early reviews of the smartphone, which was released in March, suggest that the Backflip isn’t very impressive. Not only does it run on an outdated version of Droid (the latest is version 2.1), but it doesn’t appear as if the Backflip will ever see a software upgrade either -- well, at least not anytime soon. That’s because of proprietary software Motorola has built on top of the Android operating system.

It’s not all bad news, though. Thankfully, the software Backflip and Motorola Cliq (for T-Mobile) users get “stuck with” seems pretty cool.

So far one of the most appealing aspects of Backflip seems to be its Motoblur function, which combines all of a user’s contacts from their profiles on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace into one handy address book. Additionally, it backs up the contact list into the cloud (meaning on the Internet) for easy recovery. Motoblur also places updates from a user's various social networks onto the Backflip’s home screen. In a world obsessed with digitally keeping in touch and staying on top of the things, this last feature is particularly helpful.

Of course, this is just one of many new smartphones slated for the Android OS. Hopefully those smartphones set to be released in the coming months are a bit more impressive and have more to offer than the Backflip, though at just $199 it’s not too shabby.