Well, fast forward to now and we’ve finally got the next level of INQ device – an Android 2.2-powered smartphone called the INQ Cloud Touch.
The new phone is an innovative beast – with a very light plastic chassis you could call it a cheap-feeling device, but with the cost likely to be towards the lower end of the scale, that would be a fair assessment.
The 3.5-inch HVGA screen isn’t much to write home about either, with the lightness of the phone making it a little bit of a hollow experience wiping across the display – but then again, with the price range in mind, it’s to be expected.
The rear of the phone sports a 5MP camera without a flash – it features a decent level of autofocus though, and will likely do for the majority of the photos you’ll be posting onto Facebook directly from the camera application.
Another little feature we like is the addition of the information key – simply give it a press within easy reach of the thumb and it will show you all kinds of useful information.
From turning Wi-Fi on and off to checking the time or weather, we’re big fans of physical keys and this delivers a boatload of info.
The rest of the phone is pretty standard: a multitude of colours will be available at launch, and if you can see past the fact the plastic chassis has a semi ‘my first phone’ feel, you’ll be impressed with the construction.
But the design of the device isn’t what INQ thinks will make it big: it’s the innovative overlay it’s put together with Facebook.
Rather that just offering a set of widgets to help you log in to the social service, it’s a visual collection of profile pictures and uploaded snaps drifting across the page, as well as thumbnails of links and videos too.
At the top of the screen is a customisable set of large widgets to let you decide what to do with the Facebook experience – from Places to certain friends, you can choose what the main function of the INQ Cloud Touch.
INQ has worked closely with Facebook to create the Cloud Touch and Cloud Q devices, and part of that is the use of the social graph API.
This means that your five most commonly looked at friends will be ported directly across to their own page on your phone, where you can message, poke and interact with them as you like.
The Facebook integration means you don’t have to jump out to another application to get things moving – it’s a neat idea and in our first play it worked as fast as we could expect, with an easy skip to the messaging screen from a contact page.
However, it will be interesting to note whether the INQ Cloud Touch can continue that performance when reams of Facebook data is streaming in – the Chat 3G nearly fell apart when you decided to update your feeds.
INQ Type is another new feature for the device, allowing you to simply start typing and then use it to save to a contact, search Google with or share to a social network. INQ was really talking this feature up to us in the demo, and while it is pretty cool, it’s no more impressive than the usual Google search bar on most Android phones.
We were, however, impressed by the Spotify media integration direct from the side media key – it looks and works in exactly the same way as the Spotify application on other Android devices, except the functionality to search and stream music via the cloud doesn’t work.
You can add a Premium subscription to alter this, but the main media player is still pretty good – large icons are easy to press and don’t suffer from slowdown, and playlist management on your computer via your phone is a nice touch too.
The rest of the device is a pretty much just basic Android – the internet browser didn’t do much for us at the lower HVGA resolution, although it was pretty nippy (although we didn’t get to test if Flash video was supported – we don’t think it is though).
Android 2.2 is a pretty good operating system in its own right, despite all the customisation – things like pinching in the home screen to see an exploded view of all your displays at once is still a cool feature,
Plus we love the lock screen – break through the ‘membrane’ with the padlock to open the phone, or use the INQ Type or camera icons in the same way to instantly access those applications.
The INQ Cloud Touch looks and feels pretty refreshing when you play with it for the first time – the Facebook overlay is likely to impress even the most cynical social networker (although we were disappointed to hear that Twitter integration isn’t going to be coming too).
The Spotify integration might be a boon – it’s better than the normal Android media browser, although it won’t be long before you’re wistfully staring at the Premium subscription and working out whether it will be worth the cash.
But a note of caution: this refreshing feeling is something we experienced before with the INQ Chat and Mini 3G devices, and they turned out to be a really poor handset in real life, with awful processors unable to deal with the mountain of data coming their way.
But with a real emphasis on Wi-Fi connectivity, coupled with an upgrade to the more powerful and less battery-hungry Gingerbread OS in the future, we’re a little bit more hopeful than we were with previous devices – we’re just looking forward to giving it a good going over in our proper INQ Cloud Touch review.
Oh, and we also got a chance to take a quick look at the INQ Cloud Q as well – a QWERTY device with a 2.6-inch touchscreen too.
We didn’t get to play with it properly, as it was very early software running, but the overall feel is a little bit more premium and the keys felt nice under the fingers – we’ll look to get our hands properly on that one soon too.
If you want to see a video of the phone in action, check out the one we’ve popped in below from T3 best tech videosfor a deep look through the myriad screens and options.
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