2010 was a great year for smartphones and the ones launched for AT&T were just as impressive. One example would be the Motorola Flipside, a stocky phone that measures 4.3 x 2.2 x 0.6 inches and has a curb weight of 5.1 ounces. It borrows a few design cues from the Backflip model but this one is a traditional slider.

It adopts a 3.1-inch HVGA touchscreen display that has a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels, being capable of delivering up to 16M colors. This is a small screen and you’ll immediately notice this when you will start using the onscreen navigation controls and icons which are small. Below this display you will find a generous trackpad that once pressed it will wake up the phone and serves as an alternative navigation tool.

On the right spine of the Motorola Flipside you will have access to the camera shutter and a small volume rocker, while on the left sits the microUSB charging port. On top are the power button and the 3.5mm jack, while at the back you will notice the three megapixel camera which has a self-portrait mirror. Removing the battery cover will grant you access to a microSD card slot that can accommodate cards up to a capacity of 32GB.

This is a proper Android-running smartphone so you will find features like assisted GPS, Bluetooth 2.1, voice dialing, a clock, calendar, along with the usual organizer services. Some of the other preloaded apps include  Where, Yellow Pages Mobile, Quickoffice, Vlingo Voice, mobile banking, MobiTV and Mobile Video apps, a task manager and e-Translate. Let’s not forget about the traditional Google services like Navigation, Maps, YouTube and the rest of the lot.

We are living in the era of social networking so it’s no wonder that the Motorola Flipside has an IM module for chatting with Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger and AIM, aside from text and multimedia messaging.

That three megapixel camera we’ve mentioned can take photos in three different resolutions, while the editing tools are pretty much limited to a digital zoom, panoramic mode and photo tagging. On their own, the photos look rather dull but with the incorporated Kodak Perfect Touch filter these will get the right amount of color. The camcorder also has three resolutions available but the bad news is that there aren’t any customization features. Photos/videos are saved either on the 512MB internal memory or on the bundled 2GB microSD card.

The battery of the Motorola Flipside has a rated talk time of 6 hours, while if you leave it in standby it should last for approximately 15.5 days. This smartphone has a digital SAR rating of 0.5 W/kg, according to FCC’s tests.