Motorola Evoke at CTIA

If imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, then the Apple iPhone and the impatiently awaited Palm Pre should both be swelling with adulation about now. Motorola has announced its latest entry into the touchscreen smartphone fray, the Motorola Evoke QA4 - an iPhone/Pre hybrid.

UPDATE: Hands-on video demo of the Evoke at CTIA click here.

The inevitable first reaction to the device is its uncanny likeness to the iPhone with its icon embellished touchscreen being the dominating feature. But wait, there's more.

In portrait mode, there's a slightly angled slide out keyboard that gives the device a bit of curvature when opened. We've seen that design, too, and it was on the Palm Pre. Unfortunately, the appearance of the keyboard ultimately results in a bit of disappointment in that it's just a number pad unlike the Pre's full QWERTY keyboard. We'll have to be satisfied with a virtual keyboard on the Evoke.

Motorola wasn't shy about jumping on the social networking bandwagon either. The device features so-called social features including MySpace Mobile as well as conversational style text and email displays and a full HTML web browser. Still, it seems that prominent featuring of Facebook and Twitter applications would have provided much needed momentum for Motorola.

Drawing comparisons to other phones isn't necessarily bad in the world of smartphones where to succeed a device pretty much has to have all of the features of its competitors plus some standout feature. Indeed, the Evoke has a lot going for it with some of the other features:

• quad-band GSM


• 2.0-megapixel camera


• 256MB of integrated RAM


• and the capability to expand memory with up to an 8GB MicroSD card.

It even adds stereo Bluetooth which the iPhone lacks...until the release of OS 3, that is. Inexplicably, Wi-Fi connectivity is conspicuous in its absence.

While there's not yet been an announcement of a release date or pricing, the presumed timeline seems to indicate that we can expect the Motorola Evoke to become available at about the same time as the Pre. For the sake of both Motorola and Palm, we hope that they don't wait so long as to become irrelevant by delaying release until after the anticipated summer time release of the next version of the iPhone.

We're hoping to get our hands on the Evoke later today so stay tuned for more details. And for more of the best in CTIA 2009 coverage, check out our Tech Blog and these other blog posts:

Disney Signs Deal with YouTube, Hulu Deal Still a Possibility

Skype Reaches iPhone and iPod Touch at CTIA

Sony Wows With Whopping PS2 Price Cut

Microsoft Predicting $200 Netbooks with Windows 7