The phone has a touch screen and a physical slide-out keyboard, a 5-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, 3G connectivity, the ability to shoot video at 24 frames per second, a standard headphone jack and GPS capability. The phone will be available on T-Mobile’s network in the fourth quarter. Motorola officials did not disclose the price for the phone and would not let any attendees at the Mobilize conference, where they announced the phone, examine it closely.

“This is the first phone with social skills,” said Cole Brodman, chief technology officer at T-Mobile. “Cliq and Moto Blur is the start of the next chapter of Android and shows significance of the platform.”

The phone will also be available internationally under the name Moto Dext.

Motorola also plans to introduce another phone in the next few weeks, in time for holiday season sales.

Motorola needs a hit. Financial problems over the last two years have forced the company to slash its workforce. The company has said it will focus on creating Android-based handsets but this is the first glimpse of what the company has been working on.

The Cliq also helps establish momentum for the Google-designed Android operating system. Last October HTC and T-Mobile released the first phone based on the new OS. Since then HTC has announced three more phones that run Android OS. Other handset makers such as Sony and Samsung are also reportedly working on Android phones.

The new Motorola phone’s biggest asset will be its custom-designed user interface, Moto Blur.

“The Blur makes text, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter feeds and photos from sources like MySpace, Gmail, Yahoo and corporate e-mail appear in a single stream and sync them together with no different logins,” says Sanjay Jha, co-CEO of Motorola. “This means you can focus on what people have said instead of how and where they said it. ”

Source: Wired News