15 Scenes From Motorola's Cliq Launch Party

It's the smartphone that's going social -- that's the theme of Motorola's new Cliq with MotoBlur, released Thursday, Sept. 10. Motorola's new smartphone touts an edge over its competition with a sleek, streamlined design and UI, cloud-based update and security technologies and a slew of social networking features. Motorola then kicked off the launch at its GigaOM Mobilize conference at the Mission Bay Conference Center at the University of California, San Francisco, followed by a snazzy cocktail reception held at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art. Here are a few scenes from the event.

The Cliq with MotoBlur touts five sleek, user-friendly home screens, which users can customize with their own social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, news, e-mail and entertainment apps. The homescreen also includes a Messaging Widget, directly feeding users' most current business and personal e-mail communications and social networking applications on one screen. Powering the MotoBlur is a cloud-based service that houses and stores users' data for social networking sites and e-mail information. That social networking data then is constantly synched to the users' Cliq.

The Motorola Cliq's with MotoBlur Contact feature lets users import all their contacts from their favorite e-mail and social networking sites, such as Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn -- and bring them all into one centralized device. Want to visit a friend's Facebook profile? Users just have to click on a Facebook contact and receive a comprehensive set of information, including profile picture, status updates, birthdays alerts, etc.

The Happenings Widget allows users to stay on top of their social networking apps, enabling them to see all of their social networking data, such as status updates, photo uploads, albums or Twitter feeds.







With the Status Update Widget, users can click on the drop-down menu and update their social networking status on the spot. What's unique about Cliq with MotoBlur? It can update all those social networking sites at one time.

The Weather Widget allows users to easily see the forecast for the day or week, with big, discernable graphics.

The Cliq features a 3.1-inch screen, a slim rectangular design (with curved edges) and a slide-away QWERTY keyboard, along with a responsive touch screen with a bright and user-friendly interface. The Cliq comes in polished black "Titanium" and a gray/white, which the company officially calls 'Winter White."

The MotoBlur is entirely secured and backed up in the cloud, which ensures that the users' apps and personal data are protected against security threats. If the MotoBlur is lost, users can log onto the MotoBlur portal to find its location via its GPS feature. If the phone is too far away to be retrieved, users have the ability to remotely wipe the device clean of all data via the MotoBlur portal -- all contacts, messages, data, will be eliminated from the device. Once the device is found, users can then reinstall the data, which is stored remotely on the MotoBlur server -- as if nothing ever happened.

Attendees at Motorola's launch party were treated to comprehensive up-close demos of the new Cliq with MotoBlur.

Attendees at the Motorola Cliq launch, held at the San Francisco MOMA, drank, ate hors d'oeuvres and mingled amid a colorful array of welcoming wall murals.

It wasn't hard to find dazzling images of Motorola's new Cliq with MotoBlur just about everywhere you looked.

Motorola went all out to reinforce MotoBlur's social networking capabilities. (The over-the-top wall murals also really drove that point home.)

As if the wide screens and wall murals weren't enough, Motorola prominently displayed its new Cliq with MotoBlur in glass boxes around the room.

Pillows embossed with Motorola's new social networking message were available when attendees needed to relax.

"I personally am a social networking freak. I'm on Facebook; I have my friends and family on it. It appeals to me personally because I do use the social sites. If I set my phone down or I put my phone in my purse, it's updating. It's not a dumb piece of equipment. Our competition doesn't do that. It's sleek and fast and ours is actually pushing data through."



-- Jeanette Orlen, Motorola global program and project manager

"It takes on a presence of its own in the sense that it is what you want it to be. It adapts to who you are. It doesn't handcuff you to the way it wants you to. The OS doesn't say, 'This is the way you're going to operate. You're going to have a lot of fun doing X,Y, and Z, but you have to do it this way.' This phone asks you want it to do. What is your social environment? How do you communicate with your friends, family and co-workers? You put that information in, it changes itself to adapt to that. That's what makes it different."







-- David Kenneth, IE Effects executive producer (design company for MotoBlur visual media)

Some attendees at Motorola's MotoBlur launch party discussed the art of making cocktails at the event's open bar.







The Motorola Cliq with MotoBlur is an elegant, somewhat beefy smartphone with a responsive touch-screen and a smart, fun and relatively smooth blending of social networking, information and contact info all on one screen. It could be a winner.