Motorola Charm: a blackberry-flavored Android 2.1 Motoblur phone

The Motorola Charm was officially announced today for T-Mobile and will hit stores “this summer”. The price hasn’t been revealed yet.

The phone looks like an offspring of an old-school Blackberry and a Cliq, with a full vertical QUERTY keyboard that runs Android 2.1 with Motoblur with a 2.8-inch Gorilla Glass touch display – that’s in landscape. Oh, and to round it out, it has a trackpad (Backtrack) – on the back of the phone. One thing is for sure: if you have one of these, lots of people are going to ask you what it is.

Of course, with Android 2.1 you get all the Google goodness (though 2.2 would have been a nice selling point), and for those that can take it, you have Motoblur to do your social networking (it’s what all the kids are doing these days!). Other features include a 3-megapixel Kodak camera (which could be a nice touch), comes with a 2GB memory card (expandable to 32GB), USB 2.0 port, runs on T-Mobile’s slower HSDPA 3G network (3.6Mbps not 7.2Mbps), and also has the usual wireless connectivity with GPS, b/g/n WiFi and stereo Bluetooth. It also has a second mic for better voice.

We’re not sure who exactly this phone is targeting – is it a business phone with the Blackberry look and feel? Probably, but if so, why then use this form factor to make it the first Android 2.1 phone with Motoblur? Motoblur or not, hard to see anyone that doesn’t spend all day typing emails into their phone buying one of these, unless it comes out at a very good price point.

Image: Motorola