Seven days with the Motorola Backflip

My well-loved Nokia 6820 -- a text messaging powerhouse -- succumbed to water damage a couple of weekends ago. While running I got caught in a spectacular lightning storm and made the mistake of taking the phone out to reply to a text message. Oops!

While losing my phone was bad, in retrospect it could have been a lot worse. At the time another runner and I were running home along the trail on the top of the Addicks Dam, which is at treetop level. We remarked that we were some of the tallest objects out there when a bolt of lightning struck less than a half-mile in front of us. After seeing the resulting red sparking fireball in our path, I can honestly say that we were pretty foolish for not descending to lower elevation sooner. So here's my public service announcement for today: People and massive discharges of static electricity do not mix!

Returning to the phone discussion: In need of a new cell phone, I shopped for a new model just as I do for running shoes: I read reviews to develop initial impressions, then did a lot of test-driving in the store to select a final winner. After nearly thirty minutes of giving in-hand time to all the display models in the AT&T store, I had confirmed that my number one candidate, the Motorola Backflip was the right choice for me.

At first glance, the reverse-clamshell design struck me as odd. But the more I have handled it, the more brilliant this arrangment appears. Opened, the screen and keyboard are aligned at virtually the same angle as the two halves of the Nintendo DS Lite, and it's nearly as natural to handle. Closed, the Backflip operates as a simple touch-screen slab, just like the Apple iPhone.

By the way, I really wanted to like the iPhone, but a combination of three things put an end to that:
1) An iPhone (and Motorola's Droid for that matter) is a half-inch taller and a half-inch wider than a closed Backflip. The Backflip is a better fit in the palm of my hand and is better at sharing space with the wallet in my pocket.
2) After being spoiled by the old Nokia, I really do want a tactile physical keyboard on my phone, and it has to be well-sized. (I can't help but think that the Blackberry engineers at RIM are all dainty ladies with tiny hands.)
3) iTunes for Windows makes me want to tear my hair out. The less I have to see of it, the better.

In the closed position the Backflip's keyboard is disabled, so there's no worry about the dreaded "butt dialing" phenomena. And despite being always exposed, I'm not very worried about the keyboard. It has no discrete keys, having one imprinted and continuous sheath covering the keyswitches.

The camera in my old phone was terrible, so the Backflip's 5-megapixel camera with LED flash is a welcome step up for me. I discovered that the reverse clamshell design enables the use of the LCD screen as a viewfinder in both directions. Want to take one of those phone-in-outstretched-hand self portraits? The Backflip makes this easy. I'm surprised that none of the reviews I've read has pointed out this fun fact.

On the back of the touchscreen is a small trackpad called "Backtrack" used to scroll and select items on screen. I'm rather lukewarm about this feature. It sounds great in concept, but so far it doesn't seem to be much more effective to me than the arrow keys on the keyboard. Perhaps I just need more practice to appreciate its true value.

I trashed the Motoblur widgets that display by default on the home screen of the phone. It's supposed to be like a running ticker of social networking notifications, but I find it more showy than useful. In addition, the default setting of Motoblur to continuously get background notifications is a battery drain. Instead, I've installed full-featured clients for Facebook and Twitter (Twidroid) and just refresh their listings only when I want to.

I do like finding so many free apps in the Android Marketplace. So far the most expensive app I've splurged on is the MLB At Bat 2010. I'm listening to streaming audio play-by-play broadcast of a Cardinals-Braves game right now as I type this.

Now what I might really enjoy is a dependable Blogger app. I actually began composing this post originally in the application AndroBlogger right on the Backflip itself, but it crashed on me ("force close") right as I was nearing the end. AndroBlogger is a free app, and I suppose I got what I paid for!