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Motorola BLUR is Motorola’s customized Android software that will ship with their first Android Phone – the Motorola CLIQ on T-Mobile. But the folks at XDA hacked together their own version of BLUR that daring Android fans can put on their own rooted devices like the T-Mobile G1.
That’s exactly what Sam from AndroidGuys did, loading up Motorola BLUR on his T-Mobile G1 with limited problems (that were all fixed). He reported on the process and interestingly enough, even got access/notification emails from Motorola for his new BLUR account:
Dear Sam Herren,
Congratulations, you have successfully created a MOTOBLUR account! Designed around your life and your networks, MOTOBLUR automatically delivers your status updates, social network messages, contacts, emails, and other content from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Gmail, Microsoft Exchange, RSS feeds, and other e-mail and social networking sources.
MOTOBLUR gives you peace of mind by securely backing up critical information from your phone so that your messages, contacts, and preferences can be restored.
Your MOTOBLUR account gives you access to the MOTOBLUR owner’s portal where you can:
- Locate your phone using the phone’s GPS signal
- Remotely erase your phone if you lose it or believe that it has been stolen
- Upload contacts from your desktop or other source and synchronize them with your phone
You can access the MOTOBLUR owner’s portal where you can also watch tutorials, get answers to frequently asked questions, and access other resources.
To help you get the most out of your MOTOBLUR phone, we will send periodic communications with the latest tips, tricks, software updates, and other information specific to MOTOBLUR and your MOTOBLUR phone (like new social networks that have been added to the MOTOBLUR service). To select, modify, or unsubscribe from the communications you receive from Motorola, please visit Motorola.com.
We hope you will enjoy the MOTOBLUR service and welcome to the MOTOBLUR community!
The MOTOBLUR Team
Should you feel so inclined it is definitely possible. But is it worth it? That’s for you to decide. Personally I would say no until Motorola makes their BLUR widgets a little more flexible starting with the ability to resize them.
(Does this mean the site is back up and running?)
So I’m thinking it’s increasingly likely that more ROM modders and the websites that host those ROMs are going to be getting C&D letters. It’s one thing for HTC to turn a blind eye to people “upgrading” their HTC phones with the latest HTC ROMs (hey, it’s all “in house” anyway, right?). But it’s hard to imagine Motorola ignoring the Cliq ROM being distributed for use on other manufacturers’ devices, prior to the product launch, and then have those phones creating MotoBlur accounts on top of it. So if this all comes back to bite the “community”, I hope people don’t get all in a huff and scream and swear and threaten to leave Android for the iPhone and other such foolishness. Seems to me that this kind of “in your face” activity is going to have some consequences. After the whole CyanogenMod craziness a couple of weeks ago, no one should be surprised if Moto gets a little steamed about this, and no one should be trying to claim they didn’t know.
I’m sure Motorola will be shutting this down very soon.
In the mean time, I have an honest question — why aren’t we seeing more and more custom Android builds? I know that these other, legitimate distributions (HTC Sense, MotoBlur, etc.) can use proprietary Google Apps, so why aren’t we seeing more custom, full builds of Android with kick ass features?
Why aren’t there any builds, yet, that rely heavily on OpenGL? Where is the innovation?
Cryogen mods are really, really cool… but, essentially, they’re just tweaks of the standard Google ROM to improve functionality and put more features in the hands of the users. Which, again, is awesome… but ultimately, I’m waiting to see more open (and, to borrow a phrase from the old Duke Nukem / Doom days), Total Conversion ROM’s that will knock everyone’s socks off.
I’m sure it’d be easy to get Google to agree to the use of their proprietary apps, considering these major corporations are able to do so. I’m eager for the future.