Motorola Citrus hits the Verizon market today. Is this Citrus good enough to make us twitch those eyes and our hair stand when we take a bite? Read on.
First off, Motorola-Verizon Wireless have kept up their word releasing the phone right on schedule. It should be available for purchase by the time you read this. The Citrus is powered by Android 2.1 Éclair OS platform, and comes in a candy-bar form factor.
One of the notable points about the Citrus is that, Motorola has designed the housing of the phone using over 25% recycled plastic, taking some serious concerns on the “go green” movement. The plastic is certified carbon and PVC free, contributing to eco-friendliness. We’d appreciate Motorola on this one.
Talking about the technical aspects, a proprietary 528 MHz processor manages the processes under the hood. A 2GB memory card is supposedly bundled along with your purchase and is expandable upto 32GB on a microSD. There’s onboard 100MB RAM for speedy cache. You also have the usual connectivity features like the Bluetooth 2.1 and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, accelerometer and proximity sensors, and EV-DO support for high speed Internet access. There are no physical keypads, the 3.0 inch QVGA capacitive multi touch display throws up virtual keyboard just as you would expect from any touch screen based devices. The total weight of the phone wraps just above 100 grams.
One Novel feature that deserves mention is the “BACKTRACK” navigation, (i.e) you can scroll through you menus using a touch sensitive back panel, making sure that your fingers don’t obstruct the view on your screen.
The phone comes preloaded with chock full of applications that enhance your productivity in multitude of ways. The device renders one touch quick access to all your web applications and Motorola promises of PC like web browsing experience on this Citric Éclair. Social networking warriors will not be let down as you have pre-installed Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Google aps and other widgets that help you stay connected.
We believe the Citrus to be designed for the new age Smartphone users, a compact Android device that’s loaded to the Brim with features. This 3G phone, aimed at entry level Smartphone market, is available for $50 approx after a $100 mail-in rebate and fresh 2 year contract from Verizon Wireless. Customers would also be subscribing to a nationwide data plan along with this. For those planning to enter the Android smartphone cloud, this could well be worth a look.
