Motorola’s blocky, Android-based Charm which we’ve seen repeatedly over the last week or so has been officially announced and is heading towards T-Mobile. Although it looks like little more than a BlackBerry cross-bred with a slab of concrete, the Charm has a few tricks up its squarish sleeve, like Flash support for web browsing, an updated version of Motoblur with filtering options, and a touchscreen on the back of the device, much like the Backflip.
Here’s a quick rundown of the technical specs.
- Battery life: 1170 mAh, 300 mins /334 hrs (WCDMA)
- Bands/Modes: WCDMA 1700/2100, GSM 850/900/1800/1900, HSDPA 3.6 Mbps (Category 5/6), EDGE Class 12, GPRS Class 12, HSUPA 2.0 Mbps, Version 2.0+EDR
- Dimensions: 67.20(x) 98.40(y) 11.40(z), 110 g
- OS: Android 2.1 with Motoblur
- Connectivity: 3.5mm, USB 2.0, Wi-Fi, aGPS (assisted), eCompass
- Display: 2.8” 320 x 240 QVGA TFT touchscreen
- Camera: 3 MP, digital zoom, fixed focus
- Memory: 512MB internal memory, removable 2GB Micro SD card (included); supports 32GB microSD (optional)
Motoblur, if you haven’t heard, is Motorola’s custom user interface and service for handling online social networks. Home screen widgets show you what’s been happening recently, and synchronization with the native address book keeps everything up to date. Combined with a web service, you can remotely wipe your phone, locate it via GPS, and import contacts to the handset wirelessly.
The Charm looks like it’ll be a decent mid-range smartphone, and with filters for Motoblur, I would expect that the home screen widgets for Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace would be just a little less noisy. Said widgets can also be resized, and new battery consumption settings can squeeze more life out of your handset.
No word on release date, but Motorola says the Charm will be available on T-Mobile sometime this summer. If you’re looking for something similar, Motorola also released the Flipout, which was equally, nay, more square than the Charm, and also ran Android.
Here’s a little demo video for you to enjoy:
[via Motorola]