Motorola QUENCHes thirst for Android without QWERTY

After yesterday's flurry of QWERTY-enabled phones, the Motorola QUENCH a.k.a CLIQ XT makes a case for pure touchscreen. It is a QWERTY-less Motorola DEXT (CLIQ) joining the Android crowd complete with the MOTOBLUR UI mod.

MOTOBLUR is Motorola's way of getting into the "synergy" craze - instead of a boring old Contact book and Inbox, the Motorola QUENCH (Stateside they call it MOTOROLA CLIQ XT), integrates Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Gmail and others to sync contacts and receive posts, messages and photos.

With no QWERTY, the Motorola QUENCH turns to Swype for on-screen typing. For those who have missed it, Swype uses finger-sweeps on an on-screen QWERTY keyboard instead of taps. Check out these videos to see it in action.

 
Motorola QUENCH or CLIQ XT

The phone itself doesn't differ much from a typical Android-powered touchscreen bar - it's got a 3.1" HVGA screen, Android 1.5, Android Market and Google Search integration, quad-band GSM/EDGE and tri-band 3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA. To complete the connectivity tally, the QUENCH boasts Wi-Fi, a built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS and turn-by-turn navigation, and Bluetooth with A2DP.

The browser is complete with pinch-zooming and YouTube integration. For enhanced in-call quality, the Motorola QUENCH has dual microphones for noise cancellation. A 5-megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash will quickly capture images for you to share on your favorite social networking sites.

The Motorola QUENCH will be available in the first quarter of this year and in the US it gets released next month on T-Mobile as Motorola CLIQ XT (as we all knew).