Motorola CLIQ Battery Woefully Inadequate Warns Preview

We're not cellphone manufacturers, but we can't imagine there's much more disheartening to hear reviewers suggest your latest handset "isn't ready for primetime".  Unfortunately for Motorola, that's just the conclusion the Boy Genius Report have come to in their CLIQ preview, with the handset's power-gobbling ways being the prime suspect for their dissatisfaction.

The problem seems to be the social networking aspect of MOTOBLUR, the data-hungry nature of which crunches through power as it continuously pulls in updates from Twitter, Facebook and other sites.  Even that isn't handled as best it could be; BGR even suggest "the people that created this phone barely use Twitter or Facebook for anything meaningful..."

"Not even joking when I say this — the Motorola CLIQ has possibly the worst battery life of any phone I've tested in recent memory with the current software. Maybe Motorola's BLUR back-end isn't optimized yet, maybe the phone software isn't final, but this is ridiculously bad. Especially since it doesn't even deliver your status updates when you want them, it just sits there pulling in data constantly updating in batches. I haven't used the device as a primary device so I couldn't give hard statistics on battery life when phone calling, but with on and off usage, it's ridiculously bad. The battery itself looks to be 1390mAh for those that are interested." BGR preview

Now, it's worth noting that BGR have been informed that the software their preview units are running is not the final build, and that hopefully means Motorola's engineers are working around the clock to make it less juice-thirsty.  Unfortunately, even if they manage that, the opinion is still that the CLIQ (which will go on sale as the Motorola DEXT outside of the US), while a reasonable first attempt, is not the barnstormer the company perhaps hope it is.

[vms 8137a16a1acd04ed9112]

[via TheReallyMobileProject]