I've finally gotten my hands on the Motorola DEXT though only for a few minutes. I've thoroughly wanted this to be my first Android phone but after a few minutes with it, well, here's what I think.

Design

The Motorola DEXT is a bit too chunky for me, it's even bulkier than the HTC Dream. I have two Motorola phones which are more than 2 years old and aside from some paint peelings and scratches here in there, I'm glad to report that those two mobile phones are still complete, intact and pretty much useable. That's why I'm a bit surprised with the build quality of the Motorola DEXT. The slider mechanism is a bit wobbly and I'm worried that over time, it might come off. I think there are some other reviews which says that their Motorola DEXT suffers from the same problems so I was surprised that it wasn't isolated with the units they were testing.

The Motorola DEXT has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard which even though the buttons are somewhat cramped, still manages to be quite useable.



User Interface

I was pretty excited about the Motorola Blur. I was hoping it could match the HTC Sense. However, I was disappointed that all the Motorola Blur really is is widgets for your social network contacts. Now for those addicted to Facebook and Twitter, this is good news but for those who, like me, only uses Facebook to play games, well, then the Motorola Blur UI is pretty much useless. However, screen responsiveness is really top notch. Everything is snappy and yes, very much comparable with the iPhone. Although the Motorola DEXT has a capacitive screen, it doesn't offer multi-touch which is really a bummer. The UI also lags a bit when multiple applications are open.

The Motorola DEXT's UI is limited to the homescreen which means you get Android on everything else. Now there's really not much problem with that except that I hoped Motorola would do some more with the UI, like add their own icons perhaps, kinda like what Samsung does with their WinMo phones.

Messaging

The Motorola DEXT is a message-centric mobile phone. Your Facebook, Twitter contacts can be linked with the messaging feature so you can choose whether you want to Tweet your contacts or just send them a text message. This is good advantage again, for those whose life revolves around social networking, and those with unlimited data plans.



Web Browser

Browsing on the Motorola DEXT is quite good and pretty fast. I haven't quite browsed that much Android mobile phones so I was surprised that browsing on the Motorola DEXT is almost comparable with iPhone's Safari. Of course, it doesn't have flash support which is too bad.

Audio quality

I've always found that Motorola makes phones with great speakers, I mean, they're the pioneer for surround sound on mobile phones, right? My aging Motorola V6 Maxx still trumps some of Samsung's latest mobile phones when it comes to audio quality, speaker-wise. The same is true for the Motorola DEXT. Audio quality through the speakers is pretty good, better than some Samsung mobile phones. The music player is standard on all Android phones and you can view your Album Art for all your music.

Conclusion

After being silent for these past few months, you'd expect that the Motorola DEXT would put Motorola back in the game, right? Well, for those into social networking, this is definitely a must-have mobile phone. The Motorola Blur UI makes social networking a breeze. You'll also get a nice web browser and pretty decent music playback. I'm just a bit torn with the MotoBlur. Obviously, those who are addicted to social networking are mostly tweeners but you can't really expect them to shell out £35 a month for the next two years to get the Motorola DEXT for free or around £450 for an unlocked version, only business users can afford that kind of dough. So putting MotoBlur on a smartphone is not really that great of an idea. Still, it's an Android phone with a physical QWERTY keyboard, a good option other than the aging HTC Dream which is currently the only Android mobile phone with a physical keyboard in the market, until the LG GW620 shows up in the next month of course.