The INQ Cloud Q resembles the gregarious love child of aBlackBerry and an Android smart phone. It combines a full Qwertykeyboard withthe Android 2.2 Froyo operating system, and offers a sprinkling of social-networking skills too. We reckon its innovative Facebook widgets and access to the Spotifymusic player could give it the edge over other budget Android smartphones.
We expect the Cloud Q to be available in latesummer from various networks and Carphone Warehouse. It will be free from £20 per month.
Qwerty cutie
The Cloud Q's keys don't have theergonomiccurve of a BlackBerry keyboard, but we didn't find them hard touse. They're back-lit so you can see them on a dark and stormy night, and theyseemed satisfyingly responsive to our speedy typing.
Its rounded plastic case means the Cloud Q resembles a kid's toy, but it's comfortable to hold. It's not bad-looking for the price either.
The Cloud Q has a 2.6-inch touchscreen,but youdon't have to tap it to open an app before you can start typing. Instead, you can type first and then select whether you want to send the text in a message, perform a search, orupdateyour Facebook status. It's a feature we learned tolove onthe PalmPre, although it can take a while to get used to typingfirst andasking questions later.
Face the future
INQ has stuffed the Cloud Q with Facebookfeatures. Combinedwith the Qwerty keyboard, they almost make this the fabled Facebookphone.
The central home screen is, by default, filled to bursting point with Facebook widgets, offering shortcuts to Facebook features and a stream of your mates' updates. Along the left-hand side of the screen, there's even ascrolling bar of icons that lets you access everything from Facebook Chat to Places.
After logging into your Facebook account for thefirsttime when you start the phone, some of the widgets are automatically populatedwithyour five most-contacted friends, as determined by Facebook's ownsocialgraph data. That makes it easy to contact them quickly.
If you're not a Facebook fanatic, you can remove all of these widgets from the home screen. If you keep the Facebook widgets, you'll find there's plenty of room for more Android widgets on the four other home screens. The phone comes with a bunch of widgets and apps pre-installed, and you can download heaps more from the Android Market.
INQ told us that, as a result of its widgets' tightintegrationwith Facebook's API, new Facebook features will automatically appear onthephone. That means you won't have to wait for a software update.
Musical stares
Instead of the default Android music player, the Cloud Q usesa Spotifyapp. If you have a subscription to Spotify Premium, you can stream infinite amounts of music straight to the phone. But, unlike theapp on the iPhone, the app still works as a music player even if you don'tshell outa penny. You can sync the app with your desktop version of Spotify to get your computer's MP3collection onto the phone.
The big advantage of the app is that the music library onyour phonesyncs automatically over Wi-Fi with your home computer when you're onthe samewireless network. That's handy if you have a big collection of music. Ifyou get bored of the music that's filling up your phone's memory card, youcan change the mix by selecting different playlists for syncing nexttimeyou're at home.
If this all sounds way too complicated, there's anescapehatch -- you can switch back to the standard Android music app. You could also download analternative music player from the Android Market.
Master browser
Just because the Cloud Q has a Facebook andSpotify focus doesn't mean you have to forgo other social networks and services.Android 2.2 has a great Web browser that even supports Flash, so theentireInterwebs should be at your fingertips. There are apps for every major service in theAndroidMarket too, from Yahoo Messenger to Vkontakte,and many of them are free.
INQ has also added an innovative Wi-Fi feature tohelp youstay connected, without exhausting your data allowance or your battery.When yousign into a Wi-Fi hotspot, the phone saves the GPSlocation. Whenyou leave, the Wi-Fi connection switches off automatically, until you wanderinto thenext location that's saved on your phone. INQ told us that leaving GPSon andturning Wi-Fi off can save up to 15 per cent of the phone's batterylife.
You can turn on the Wi-Fi manually to connectto a newhotspot, and that location will get saved too. There's also a worldwide databaseof free hotspots, so, if you approach one of them, the Wi-Fi connection willwake up automatically there too. Every INQ phone user's hotspotdiscoveries get fed back into the database, which means it should grow rapidly.
Since Wi-Fi switches off automatically, INQ hastried tomake it easy to access the phone's connectivity controls quickly. A button on the upper-left-hand side of the phonelaunches aninformation page, on which you'll find shortcuts to settings like Wi-Fi, and adashboard that displays data about the phone's battery life and other details.
Outlook
Like its touchscreen sibling, the Cloud Touch,the INQCloud Q is a social butterfly with a Facebook addiction and aSpotifycraving. It's not the prettiest phone we've seen, but its low price,innovative features and powerful Android software mean we're looking forward to giving it a full review.
Edited by Charles Kloet