Welcome to my newest blog about my first Android Phone

I made up my mind to buy an Android Phone yesterday and I went up to the Fifth Floor of SM Annex at SM City(SM North) to do price comparison on the Samsung Y phone. But I did not take the elevator and instead used the escalators. In the fourth floor, I saw a Motorola open stall and inquired what was their cheapest Android phone model. They showed me a new phone, not heavily advertised in the Philippine media, the Motorola Fire XT. I completely forgot about buying the Samsung Y phone and I paid cash P6,450 pesos, so I will not be ridiculously charged with credit card mark-up. This is my second day with my motorola phone and I transferred one Globe SIM card to my new Fire XT phone. The surprise with this entry level Android phone is that it has two cameras! One VGS resolution camera for the front and one 5 megapixel camera for the back. This means that it is capable of video chatting and calls say using Google Chat! The camera came with a small 2Gbytes sd card, that is so small, we plan to increase that to 32 Gbytes soon! Here are the basic published specs:

Spec	Description
Release date	September 2011
OS	Android 2.3.5(Gingerbread)
Form factor	capacitive touch tablet
Bands/Modes	Dual band HSPDA/Quadband Edge
Dimensions	61.9 (Width), 114 (Height), 11.95 (Thickness)
Weight	114 g
Display	3.5" 320 x 480 HVGA, 262KTFT, multitouch
Memory	Up to 32 Gbytes
Processor	Qualcomm MSM7227T-1 800Mhz
Audio	MP3 player, Stero FM Radio
Video	Capture/Playback
Camera	front 5 MPixels camera with digital zoom, AF, LED flash; Secondary front VGA camera 0.3 MPixels camera for video chatting
Battery	1540 mAh, GSMTT: 680 min GSB sTB: 682 hours WCDMATT: 469 min WCDMA STB:713 hours
Graphics card	Qualcomm Adreno 200 GPU
Special Feature	MotoSwitch UI, Friend Centric widget
Other	eCompass, Proximity Sensor, Ambient Light Sensor, Accelerometer, GPS/aGPS, LED Notifications, Organized App Tray

The phone comes with the following built-in software:

• Message
Google Talk, Email,SMS, MMS, POP3/IMAP
• Google SErvices
Google Maps, Google Talk, Youtube, Google Mainl, Android Market, Google Navigation, Google Places, Google Search, QIK video chat Live Newspaper

Data from Motorola documentation and leaflets. I still have to buy a micro sd card with > 8 Gbytes capacity. Data specs are also available at gsmarena: motorola fire xt-531 specs and http://www.phonearena.com/phones/Motorola-XT531_id5882.
The phone was first released on September 2011.
For photos, motorola: Motorola Mobility Delivers a Sleek,Slim and Budget Friendly Smartphone-Experience with Motorola-XT531-377 I am shocked that the license of the photos say we cannot republish in a blog! So you have to click on the above link. I will post our camera shots later!
To be continued.
I am happy so far with the phone. It will take me more days to explore the capabilities of the phone, but I already can connect to the Internet using our DSL at home with a Linksys WRT54G model Wireless G router. Needless to say this is not my first Motorola branded phone, my first model was a slim and thin L6? model which is still working and bought more than five years ago.

Verdict: I can heartily recommend the Motorola Fire XT as your first BUDGET Android powered smartphone! Here is a camera shot of my current main applications screen.

I need to improve the camera screen shots! ] Further Reading:

• Qualcomm: information on Adreno
• Motorola: Fire XT official page