Motorola DEXT review

Motorola has been out of the limelight for a long time, and its handsets were always pretty unimpressive, often with a low spec, but in a spectrum of colours.

This is why the introduction of the Motorola DEXT was such a pleasant surprise.

It's the first Motorola device that we've been excited about since the RAZR, because like that first endeavour into something different, the DEXT perfectly fits into the trends of today. Back then, it was mobiles that look sexy, now it's social networking. Thumbs up there Moto.

The DEXT brings together the most popular social services of our time, including MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Photobucket, Picasa and LastFM, in a handy interface called MOTOBLUR.

The first thing you'll have to do, as you would if you were first turning any smartphone on, is enter the details for each of these accounts. It's pretty simple, but those who are eager to get straight into the action, it may seem a little tedious.

Annoyance aside, MOTOBLUR will be ready to go when you've entered all of your social networking details.

On first look, we were taken aback by the default homescreen, finding it too littered with icons and widgets, including Facebook updates, messages, weather, and your status all displaying on one screen.

We'd be happy just to see the Social Status widget where you can post your status across all services (alternatively, you can just pick one), messages and weather.

Messages will display any SMs messages, along with your social networking messages.

You can move these widgets around between the five homescreens with ease using the responsive capacitive touchscreen, but there's still not a huge amount of space on each compared to other handsets with the same sized screen (3.1-inches, 320x480 pixels).

It would be a lot more helpful if the widgets were smaller, especially when you consider that each widget only includes a couple of lines of text.

On the right side of the screen (or bottom if you have the keyboard closed), there are three tabs - one to bring the main menu up, one to take you straight to your contacts and the third to the dialler.

When setting up the DEXT, you can choose which of your social networking accounts you'd like to use as the default. We opted for Facebook.

MOTOBLUR then will collate all of your Facebook contacts into the contacts list. You will have to enter a phone number for these contacts if they don't have one linked to their Facebook account.

If you want to see what's going on with all of your friends across different social networking sites, head to the Happenings section where you can view all your friends' feeds in one place with any posts or status updates too. Select one of these to message the contact back.

You can choose to do this with whatever means possible depending on how they posted the message. For example, you can @ reply or DM if the message was from Twitter, or send a message/post on the contacts wall if you're using Facebook.

Other options here include SMS if you have their number too.

The Motorola DEXT features a slide out full Qwerty keyboard. This is an advantage as it's aimed at social networking, but that doesn't mean it's easy to use.

The keys are pretty cramped, being moulded from one piece of soft plastic. This means the buttons surrounding the one you're pressing will move too. It's also too spongy to use particularly comfortably.

The four function buttons below the screen (ALT, search, space, symbol and back) are all slightly indented around the top edge and sides, just like keys on a computer keyboard, only smaller.

If you're holding the DEXT in landscape mode with the keyboard out, there's a four-way navigation key to the left of the keyboard, with a central select button.

Below the screen are three hardware keys - the first brings up a menu allowing you to add items to the homescreen, change the wallpaper, search, view notifications and change the settings. The central button is the home button and the third is a back key.

If you're about looks, these three keys look pretty tacky with painted on icons compared to the sleek screen and are pretty likely to rub off if you keep it in your bag with sharp objects.

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