Motorola Backflip for AT&T unboxing (engadget)

[Yoshiofthewire]

Motorola Backflip for AT&T unboxing and hands-on -- Engadget

 

[cypherphone]

LOL phone... engadget might as well have said DONT BUY THIS CRAP PHONE! I still cant believe ATT would put this as their first android, THEN remove google from it and replace with yahoo. Epic fail! Precedence for whats to come with the remainder 4 ATT androids... bloated, yahooed and googleless.

 

[Yoshiofthewire]

Well the Yahoo, motoblur and at&t BS you should be able to strip out.
The problem is it otherwise is a slow ass android phone.

But given at&t's track record of releasing phones (See HTC Canceled er... Lancaster ), if you believe that at&t is going to release 4 more android phones this year, Mr. Eiffel has some scrap metal located in central Paris that I have been contracted to dispose of.

http://tinyurl.com/atthtc

 

[linuxdood]

As it turns out, not slow at all. On par with the 3GS

 

[d1g1taLph3r3t]

Android and Me has an article detailing the major flaws behind the Motorola Backflip.

Go here to see what they have to say. You may learn something new.

​

 

[NaplesBill]

That Android and Me article is severely flawed due to lack of accurate info. Two of the four items mentioned are irrelevant. The Backflip WILL be updated to 2.1 soon enough. Also, they even updated at the end of the article, you CAN install non-market apps via adb and a pc. The other two items are both blown way out of proportion. The so-called bloatware is very small as far as storage goes. There is still plenty of space available for app installation. The google search can be an issue for some, but root is almost here and I'm sure this will be resolved. In the meantime, it's very easy to change your browser home page to google and you can also create a shortcut on the home screen.

 

[james27007]

I agree with NaplesBill

So this is what they said (nothing really new)

So to recap the AT&T Backflip:

1. Outdated Android 1.5 with Motoblur
2. No Google search (replaced by Yahoo)
3. Unable to remove AT&T bloatware apps
4. Cannot install non-market apps

IMHO:

#1, it uses 1.5 becasue Motorole says they have perfected motoblur on 1.5 (and I tend to agree since I use all that stuff); but they are working on 2.1; so it will be great.

#2 If you install voice search (one of my other posts); you get google search at the push of a button and when in the browser. You just don't get the google search bar (yet)...

#3 The only real bloatwear is (Where, AT&T Radio, MusicID and AT&T Navigator). So not that much space is wasted, and to be honest, I have over 84 apps total installed (not including widgets) and still have 73MB of free space. So space is no issue there.

#4 As stated before we have a workaround for that. Not as nice an option, but it works.

The problem is how they descripe the issues; above is how I see them and they are not that bad. I have used phones with a lot worse drawbacks. So for anyone reading that and thinking twice about the backflip; don't worry, it is a great phone and just works. And once the 2.1 update comes out, it will be all that much more sweet

 

[marvin02]

If you just can't stand seeing the AT&T stuff in the application tray try dxTop (a home replacement). It allows you to hide icons in the application tray. You can still view all of the hidden icons or use them if you need to. If you switch back to the standard home app the icons are there so you don't have to un-hide them them all before switching.

Also when looking for search widgets I came across Aurora search. Aurora searches the files on your phone, including calendar, contacts, etc. It also gives the option of searching for the term you enter with Google.

For google search I just made a bookmark to the google search page and put a shortcut to that on one of my home screens.

As far as the Backflip running Android 1.5, here is an article from Wired about the fact that most phones are not running 2.xxx of Android. Motorola's Droid is at 2.01 and HTC's Nexus One is at 2.1. Every other Android phone is running a 1.xxx version of Android. While the article wants to take the manufacturers to task for this they outline some very good reasons why this is happening.

I do think that most of the 'OMG - where's google?' rants are over the top and more than a bit hysterical.