Review: Motorola Defy
The Motorola Defy has a great assortment of messaging options, more than you'll find on most smartphones. The phone uses a Swype keyboard with a slightly improved look. Swype lets you draw a line from letter to letter to spell words, instead of typing letters individually. I like Swype, and even though I found some other aspects of the interface could be laggy to the touch, I never had problem with Swype recognizing my finger gestures.
The phone also uses a universal inbox. It excludes email, but gathers up all of your text messages, DMs from Twitter and messages sent through Facebook into one spot. So, it's more of a social inbox than a place to see all of your communication, but that fits with the Motoblur ethos.
SMS comes in a nice looking, threaded text messaging app, so you can see both sides of a text conversation at once. Pictures also show up among the conversation bubbles. The phone has great instant messaging support. You get Google Talk in its own app. Then there is a separate client that offers Yahoo, AIM, Windows Live and even MySpace messaging. MySpace messaging is still a rarity, even on smartphones, so it's a nice bonus. I think Facebook messaging would be an even bigger draw, however.
The phone can also handle email with two separate apps. A Gmail app is dedicated to Google's own mail service, and it has more robust features and a nicer interface than the more basic Email app, which handles Exchange, POP and IMAP accounts.
CTIA Fall 2010
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Motorola Defy (2010)
