Motorola have come out all guns blazing by announcing the first batch of what will be dozens of new Android phones. The Motorola DEXT and CLIQ are the first Android phones developed by Motorola, and will feature an innovative new way of integrating all your messages, emails, pictures and other forms of communication with your social media connections.

They’ll also feature MotoBlur – Motorola’s new user interface that takes Android to the next level.

Motorola aren’t seeing the two new phones as make or break – although they’re perilously close to going to the wall – but rather they’re the start of a brand new range of Android phones, which together will seal the future of Motorola’s strategy – and its overall fate.

Are the new Motorola Android devices good enough to save Motorola? Read on for more details!

Evolving Androids

Android phones have been with us for just over a year now, and we’re finally seeing some advances in their evolution.

From the stock Android user interface of the T-Mobile G1 to the HTC Hero’s Sense interface, the open design of Android means manufacturers are free to make their Android phones look and do whatever they feel like.

And Motorola have decided their Android phone will look like no other!

Motorola CLIQ and DEXT

The first Motorola Android phones will be the Motorola CLIQ (US only) and the DEXT (same phone, but destined for overseas markets). Both will be launched in October.

Both the CLIQ and DEXT have some pretty fine features (though not too earth shattering, it has to be said):

• 5 megapixel camera
• Sliding QWERT keyboard
• HSDPA and WiFi
• aGPS
• Video recording at 24 frames per second (but only QVGA resolution)
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• Rock solid design
• Superb touchscreen with glass capacitive technology for super-repsonsive, er, touching!
• Qualcomm MSM7201 processor (not the 1GHz Snapdragon, though, unfortunately)

These are solid specs. Not earth shattering, as I said, and if anything, not as good as those of the HTC Hero.

Where the Motorola Android phones really shine, though, is with Motorola’s brand new user interface – MotoBlur.

MotoBlur in action

MotoBlur is what Motorola have been working on for many months now, and is the reason we’ve hardly heard anything from the company all year.

MotoBlur extends Android in three key ways:

• Speed – it’s dramatically faster than any other Android interface.
• New user interface design – brand new home page, widgets, apps, animations and transitions create an overall user experience unlike any other Android device.
• Social integration – MotoBlur brings all of your social media apps together in one great new user interface. All of your Facebook Statuses, Twitter updates, texts, alerts – anything in fact – is brought together in one integrated app that lets you see exactly what’s going on in your social circle.

This social integration is the key to MotoBlur, and how Motorola sees its new range of Android devices differentiating themselves from other Android devices on the market.

The key features of MotoBlur

MotoBlur collects information from anywhere you have an account, such as:

• MySpace
• Twitter
• Facebook
• GMail
• Outlook
• Last.FM
• SMS messages
• MMS picture messages

It scoops all that info up and streams it onto your phone’s homepage, organizing it into threads so you can keep track of your conversations from across the Web as you have them.

Think of it as FriendFeed on steroids!

Better still, MotoBlur works both ways: as well as aggregating al your info from the Web, you can push your status to those same services with just a single click – MotoBlur will automatically post your message to all of these services in one go.

MotoBlur – will it work?

I’ve been skeptical about Motorola’s phones for years now, as they’ve consistently been overhyped and have been left for dead by the competition.

But with MotoBlur, I’m actually pretty excited. Motorola seem to have identified a key niche that genuinely differentiates their product from all of the competitoin (not just other Android devices), and is actually useful to consumers as well!

MotoBlur will appear on the Motorola CLIQ on T-Mobile in the US and on the Motorola DEXT on Orange in the UK, both from October 2009.

Enough with the words, show me the videos!

Is the Motorola CLIQ and DEXT worth waiting for? Check out these videos and see for yourself. I think you’ll agree, it’s looking like the best Android device out there at the moment (but then, Sony Ericsson’s new Android device is also just aorund the corner! Gotta love competition!)

Mmmm, looking tasty! And remember – the Motorola CLIQ and DEXT are just the first of what Motorola are promising will be dozens of new Android-based smartphones.

Update: The Motorola DEXT is now available across Europe. You can buy the DEXT from just £25 a month, and even get it on a 12 month contract (which is unheard of for a smartphone!).
[Source: GigaOm, CNet]