CES: Motorola Blackflip debuts

LAS VEGAS – Motorola introduced the Backflip Wednesday, its latest Google Android-based smartphone. Scheduled for a global release at the beginning of Q1 2010, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha said the device would be available in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and North America early in the first quarter 2010, but declined to disclose the wireless carriers that will offer it.

AT&T, which recently announced five upcoming Android smartphones, including one from Motorola, is widely speculated to be among the US carriers. The quad-band GSM phone supporst the same 850/1900/2100MHz 3G bands that AT&T uses in its 3G network, along with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS.

The Motorola Backflip's design is somewhat unique. Smaller, but similar in appearance to the Motorola Cliq, the Backflip opens like a book, rather than sliding open, with its full QWERTY keyboard exposed on the back when closed. Motorola says the keyboard is durable enough to endure such exposure.

The Backflip features a trackpad, which Moto calls Backtrack, located on the back of the display in the open position, and it also sports a 3.1-inch HVGA touch screen.

Like the Motorola Cliq, the Backflip uses Motoblur software will be upgradeable to Android 2.1. The phone initially comes with Android 1.5, a 5-megapixel camera, a 3.5mm headphone jack, 2GB internal memory (expandable up to 32GB), and a full HTML browser.