Customer Reviews

Motorola CLIQ XT Android Phone (T-Mobile)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I previously had the G1 Google phone which I loved, but had grown tired of the slider physical keyboard. It was still the best phone I had ever owned, with the Android Market apps making it endlessly customizable and ever improving.

So when I went to look for a non-slider Android, my only choices were the MyTouch which I didn't like the look of, the Samsung Behold II which seemed universally disliked from what I read, and the Cliq XT.

As soon as I held this phone in the T-Mobile store, it was love at first sight.

While not being that much smaller in dimension than the G1, it feels sleeker, lighter and more high tech. The front has a grooved face which might be a dust magnet over time, but the back has a rubberized textured surface that gives the phone a really high quality feel.

Already very familiar with the Android OS from my G1, I was able to jump in immediately. Almost all my apps transferred from the G1. Five homescreens rather than three is a welcome improvement, although I don't like clutter so I only use two.

The screen is as nicely responsive as the G1, and seems brighter on the lowest setting (necessary to keep on lowest setting, all these smartphones are huge battery hogs). I'm not running the Blur features because I'm not that into Facebook, Twitter, etc. so I can't speak about what those do to the battery. I'm just relieved they're optional and not mandatory on the screen.

Which is what's so great about the Android phones: Just about everything about them is 100% customizable to your tastes/needs. I've never touched an iPhone and really have no desire to after seeing what Android can do.

Vast improvements:
*The touchpad replaces the G1's trackball which was always a bit too sensitive. This makes navigating tiny website links a breeze.

*Web page loading seems much snappier on the XT, even on 2G. Plus uses the great multitouch and pinch feature for zooming.

*The 5 mp camera with flash takes fantastic pictures, unlike the G1 which lacked a flash.

*Separate headphone jack and charging jack: The G1 integrated them in one which seemed foolish in light of how much time was spent charging it.

*Proximity sensor: LOVE. On a call this turns the screen off (rather than locking it like the G1 did) to prevent mistaken key presses. When you pull it away from your face (to use a numeric call menu for instance) it turns the screen back on. This should be on every phone.

*Virtual keyboard: The whole reason I got this was to get away from the physical keyboard. While it comes loaded with Swype, I found that to be very inaccurate with an annoying pop-up screen constantly trying to guess what you typed. Instead there's a Swype-style app on the market called SlideIT that works the same only far more accurate, with larger keys and fully customizable shortcut dictionary. It isn't free (I paid about $8), but worth every penny in my opinion.

*Speaker on the front rather than the back. Now music sounds loud and clear. The G1's speaker was on the back making audio muffled, making earphones required practically at all times.

Combined with Motorola's superior call quality, this phone is a solid unit that fits well in your pocket and feels great in your hand. I really can't think of anything bad about it except the battery life (1 to 1-1/2 days if you don't use it constantly), but the G1 did a good job of lowering my expectations there. People complain about the firmware being out of date (still running 1.5, waiting for 2.1), but not knowing what I'm missing the XT's performance is more than enough for my needs.

EDIT: Less than a year later, and Moto has decided to strand the XT on the ancient Android version 1.5. Increasingly laggy performance, random reboots (at least twice a day) and the number of apps that support this version dwindling daily -- Moto doesn't care. Their solution is to push the new Cliq2 on us, which needless to say I'm not falling for. Sayonara, Moto. I used to be a happy, loyal customer, but I won't support a company that won't support its own products.

This is my first smart phone and i find it really great as far as look and feel goes. However i am really annoyed at how Motorola has locked down the bootloader on their customized version of android. It is truly despicable what they have done with android. The battery power is nothing to write home about. Then motorola's customized UI motoblur runs all kinds of services in background which suck the power out and drain the phone. You better be ready to charge it twice a day.The user can't uninstall or even disable these services even if they want to. It is a great phone with some really restrictive software. Can you imagine not being able to uninstall a vendor installed application on your laptop or desktop? Guess motorola thinks they can get a free OS like android which benefits from open community practices and turn it into a bird cage.
This is definitely my last motorola phone!

I could make this a long winded review or... simply say this is a fun little smartphone.

I don't know how it compares to other smartphones as this is my first. But I have not been disappointed. Call quality (which is still my primary reason for having any cell phone) is excellent. MotoBlur is a lot of fun. The camera will never match my DSLR, but don't need it to. At 5 MP it's better than any other phone I have had. The bluetooth has been very dependable with my Ford Sync and my ear piece. Love the Android OS and applications. My wife has an IPhone, but now wishes she had an Android based smartphone. Only negative so far is the battery life. With all the pushin & pullin with MotoBlur the battery does drain a little quicker than what I have been use to with traditional cell phones. But it makes it easily through the day and my ususual is to plug my cell in over night. Plus it easil charges off my laptop during the day when I need to, so the battery life is not a deal buster for me.

I read a lot of reviews slamin' one feature or another on this phone, but as I said in the beginning, I have been very pleaseed with it.

This is my first smartphone. I always wanted to get an iPhone but don't really wanna switch to AT&T (worst service in the universe). Got a good deal on this Cliq XT. It's packed with feature. I didn't sign up for the $30-a-month T mobile data plan and only use wifi for downloading apps. It still works well. It has lots of features. It connects to your facebook and email account. However new email messages are always on the phone screen. If you lose the phone and someone picks it up, s/he will have direct access to your facebook and email account. I was unable to make it password protected. That's why I don't have my email account linked to the phone. I only downloaded the weather channel app, and a game. That's it. But the phone has started to slow down already. It's slow to update information when a saved wifi hotspot is detected. The animation is just not as smooth as the iPhone. When someone calls, the call is answered by sliding a bar on the screen just like the iPhone. But most of the time, the phone is just nonresponsive when I try to answer it. I usually slide it 3 times before the call is connected. But the call is always disconnected right away because the "end call" button will be right at where the "answer" slide bar were. So the third attempt of sliding the bar usually ended up pressing the "end call" button and disconnecting the call.
I don't know how to write a good and thorough review but these were the main problem i've found... Slow on updating. Slow on making and receiving calls. Short battery life. It's a great phone if you don't mind its processing speed.

I lowered the rating from 3 stars to 2. One month of ownership and I've discovered more problems. Just like the next poster said, factory installed applications cannot be uninstalled so they're just taking up space. Sometimes when the phone rings, I tried to slide the "answer" bar to answer the call but then the phone becomes unresponsive. 3 seconds later an error message pops up and asks me to forceclose. At that time the phone just keeps on ringing. I need to click the "forceclose" button in order to answer the phone. Answering phone calls should be the MOST basic function a phone has, yet I need to get thru all that hassle to do that. Also when I go to a new hotspot, sometimes the phone just won't connect to the network even tho it has the network remembered. In order to connect again, the phone has to be restarted (switching it off, then on) which takes forever. Hopefully this is something an updated firmware can fix. But afterall maybe I should've gotten a HTC...

7/25/10 -- lowered rating to 1 star. I've had enough of this phone. 9 out of 10 times the phone rings, I'm not able to answer. I slide the answer bar, no response, the phone keeps on ringing, and then an error message pops up asking me to force close. Then I could finally answer but most of the time it has already jumped to my voice mail. I only have 2 apps but it doesn't matter. The phone is just slow itself. Wifi always loses connection even tho it's showing "connected". If a phone can't even answer or make calls, I don't see a reason of keeping that phone. Sold it on Craiglist. Got a Garminfone and it's 10x smoother. Motorola is done.

Here's my pros and cons of Motorola Cliq XT:

Pros:
- Display resolution/quality is very impressive.
- call quality is good
- speaker is loud and clear
- Wi-Fi is easy to setup and doesn't need a data plan to use.
- the 5MP camera takes good pictures.

Cons:
- has to setup Motoblur account to use the phone. This should be optional.
- has to sync calendar to be able to use. Again this should be optional. I don't care about syncing.
- Turn on is slow, takes about a couple minutes instead of seconds.
- while very sensitive to typing text, scrollbar sometimes slow to respond.
- don't have (didn't see) timer application installed.
- don't have (didn't see) a notepad application that I could use to keep some notes.
- can't use the regular camera USB cable for this.

I bought this phone directly from T-Mobile as an upgrade. It works well. The Motoblur is a nice feature that integrates all/most of your social networking contacts in one place. (It shows your contacts' Facebook/Twitter profile pictures with their numbers!) The camera is pretty clear for a cell phone, voice quality is very good on my end.

But the first of my two big complaints is that the Android version it runs is 1.5 (when the new/latest is 2.2). This means that many of the available apps don't work on this phone. They won't even show up in the app store! But at least you won't realize what you're missing.
Second, this phone can be very slow! Even if I start at the home screen, the phone runs very slow when I'm receiving a call. I would swipe at the answer key/bar several times, and the phone won't even register it. It feels like I'd be clicking it for nearly five seconds sometimes (while the phone continues ringing) before it finally answers the call. When the phone can't do its main job as a phone, it really has lost its purpose.

And the battery life is sucky.

Stranded in 1.5 land less than a year after I bought the damn thing. Everyone else is getting the fancy 2.1 version and their solution is to buy a new phone? With what these things go for new, I'm transferring in the future to samsungs. Motorola will no longer be getting money from me.

I have been a T-mobile customer for years and have owned some great phones. I believe that you should ''upgrade'' every time you sign for 2 years. The Motorola Cliq XT isn't worth signing your contract. The touchscreen is horrible compared to the Samsung Behold it replaced, it doesn't work with a stylus( I tried the one that came with my old T-mo Wing)to improve accuracy in typing. The Wi-Fi dropped the 1st few times I connected to my home network, a problem I never had with the T-Mo Wing(a phone made years ago). It has MotoBlur, rather than dialing out to your friends...if someone posts on Facebook it can dial that person( most people don't know everyone on their "friends list" but the Cliq XT will get you a return phone call? I have been asked more than once ''If I just woke up'' due to the sound quality sometimes. Despite being made by Motorola it has little likeness in quality to the Droid or X. The battery runs down quick from time to time. I've had good days when I've used it to its max and then there are days when I don't use it and the battery still runs down in half a day. Repeat Don't buy this phone...even used at a cheap price!

I swear I should have never bought this phone.

First of all it is running version 1.5 of Android, which I didn't think much of until I realized that a lot of software will not work on this phone. This is like buying a computer with Windows Vista, with a promise of getting Windows 7 later.. You wouldn't do that. You would just go buy another computer with windows 7 now.

Second, I got the t-mobile version and there are too many applications that I cannot delete that seem to want to run. I have a program to keep "killing" them, but I shouldn't have to get a program to kill applications.

Third and most important it is slow.. Which again I didn't think much of, but it is so slow I cannot even use the phone part of the phone sometimes. I try to pick up calls or dial and I get the following errors:

"process com.android.phone is not responding"
or
Activity Dialer (in process com.android.phone) is not responding

Wait... This is a phone. I would expect the operating system to give priority to the phone process. The phone seems to want to update all the news and weather widgets first. Seriously, when the phone part of the phone is not working, there is a problem.

These problems may be attributed to Android's operating system and not Motorola hardware but they are real problems with the phone.

Motorola has better phones, you may want to look at them. This one should be passed up.

This phone has a processor that is half as fast (524MHz) as some of the newer phones from HTC (1GHz snapdragon processor). However, this phone comes in a size that is a smaller form factor that makes it easier to pocket and keep on you at all times, and that's important to me.

I get over a day out of the battery, but some others may not. One thing to do is explore the stock battery management feature. Performance mode is quick and a pleasure to use. Smart mode allows the phone to go into a sleeper mode during off hours so you can get more time out of the batter (it also reduces radio usage after 15 minutes of idleness). There is a third mode to economize, but I haven't needed it.

I suggest people get used to the phone before loading apps onto it from the android market accessible from the phone. What I found is that as apps are added, some of them will cause battery drain that you may not consider appropriate. Some apps may bog the phone down, and you may need to decide whether you really want that app. Honestly, there weren't too many apps (~5 that I added and keep) that I felt I really needed beyond what was already installed.

Having more apps that are running on the phone can cause it to get bogged down (sometimes just as a call is being received). If you're going to need a lot of extra apps, you may want to consider using something with a faster/newer processor.

What I do like is the photo quality, the LED flash so I can get shots is dimly lit situations, the video feature, email integration, happenings(facebook) app, news and weather app, mapping and gps feature, web browser, WiFi to get a faster network connection, radio (including FM), 5 home windows, and shazzam. Sure, a lot of those software features may be available in some variety in the android market, but I appreciate that this was there to begin with since they work fine for me. I also like the stereo headphones that came with it (both for music and taking calls), and the charger (detacheable cord from the AC block so the chord can charge the phone via a USB connection as well as make the phone accessible from a PC - like an external hard drive). Something to note is that the battery and micro-SD memory card are removeable if needed, but the case is not the easiest thing to open up since it closes up rather snugly. However, I don't foresee a need to open it up unless the battery or memory card fails.

One that that "got me" in the beginning was that it would not take to my old sim card. It shipped with a new sim card, but since I had contact info on the old one I wanted to re-use the old one. However, this led to the phone failing to come-up on after turning it on. It would only allow emergency calls. T-mobile quickly figured out that my sim card from 8 years ago was the issue (I guess the IMEI number was from the VoiceStream era.. if you remember who they were). They copied the contents to a new sim card, and the phone came up properly from then on.

Overall I'm glad I got this phone. The slim/light/smaller form factor, getting at least a day of usage per charge, features and price are great. I believe it to be a well thought out phone for my usage. T-mobiles network coverage has been good for me in the areas I go to. Typically I have 3G coverage, so I can get a faster connection. Using the Edge network (when I don't have 3G) can be unbearable for web browsing.