Motorola Flipout - Review

“The Motorola Flipout’s unconventional design makes it fun to use. The phone also has some handy apps, but lacks the quality features offered by higher-end smartphones”

Ideal for kids and teens

Moto Flipout: square, but not boring

The Motorola Flipout is a funky looking mobile phone that combines unique functionality with an equally unusual square-screen design.

Flipout’s square touchscreen - small as it is - is undeniably cute and I loved how the hinge underneath one corner allowed it to flip out to one side, revealing a small Qwerty keypad underneath.

The keypad may only be around 2.8in, but typing text messages and emails wasn’t very difficult.

Flipout’s touchscreen did present a few typing troubles, however, because its small size and square design meant the virtual keypad was much smaller than most existing touchscreen smartphone owners will be used to.

The screen’s touch-sensitive icons for in-app menu options and jumping back to the main menu are useful, though.

It’s fair to say that Flipout’s quirky design won’t be to everyone’s liking. Though I found the phone’s build quality reassuring because it feels solid, has a proper glass touchscreen and a metal plate covers the screen’s underside.

Android under the hood

The keypad's easy to type on

Unfortunately the touchscreen’s resolution is quite poor and everything from app icons to videos looked pixelated or grainy - so the phone isn’t ideal if you’re a YouTube junkie.

Speaking of apps, the Flipout runs Google’s Android operating system for smartphones and so has access to the circa 210,000 apps currently available from Android Market - Android’s answer to the iPhone’s App Store.

The phone doesn’t come with many customer Motorola apps, but does feature its own user-interface called Motoblur that - among other things - integrates various social network feeds such as Facebook and Twitter, into a single window. The result is faster and simpler social networking while on-the-move.

Another Motoblur feature - My MotoBlur - allowed me to track the phone’s physical location via its GPS signal from a PC. The feature did work but just wasn’t as advanced as HTCSense.com.

Phone Portal - one of Motorola’s other pre-installed apps - also made it easy to move my emails, photographs and music between the phone and my PC because the pair can be connected over USB or a wi-fi.

Flipout certainly isn’t a top-end smartphone, so I wasn’t surprised to find that it only features a 3.1Mp camera capable of average quality photographs.

Light and portable

Pictures were rubbish

While the lack of a flash means snapping pictures in dark locations isn’t possible, the phone does include Kodak’s “Perfect Touch” tool for brightening and sharpening images after they’ve been saved to the phone’s Micro SD card-based memory.

Perfect Touch can also reduce red eye problems in about 80% of photographs, Kodak says, though I couldn’t make it work for myself.

Surfing the internet from the Motorola Flipout is possible, but it’s probably not an ideal choice if you’re a frequent mobile internet user because while pages load quickly, the small and oddly-shaped screen makes navigation tricky.

Call quality on the Flipout was generally very good because it has noise-cancelling microphones integrated into its body.

Battery life was also very good, lasting for around two days without a recharge - despite frequent use.

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