The Motorola Flipout (model no. MB511, also styled FLIPOUT) is a swivel-style smartphone designed by Motorola, announced on June 2, 2010. Its square-shaped body has two parts that rotate near the bottom-right corner to reveal a five-row QWERTY keyboard below the screen. The Flipout has a 2.8 inch touchscreen display (QVGA 320x240 pixels) and runs on Android 2.1 (Eclair) with the Motoblur interface.
The Flipout came in a wide variety of colors such as "Poppy Red", "Brilliant Blueâ³, "Licorice Black", "White", and "Saffron", although availability depended on region.
Users may customize the phone by installing apps through the Android Market; however, some carriers (AT&T) do not give users the option to install non-market apps onto the Flipout (a policy they have continued with all of their Android phones and which was already in effect with the Backflip). Users can circumvent this limitation by manually installing 3rd party apps using the tools included with the SDK while the device is connected to a desktop.
Since Motorola won't provide further updates for the Flipout, CyanogenMod 7.2 (Android 2.3.7) is used to update the device beyond official releases. Work was carried out at Xda-developers to update the Flipout to Android Gingerbread.
The Flipout was successfully "rooted" (manipulated to provide Superuser access). This allowed installing and launching custom software, and root access on the phone using a Terminal emulator. Later on, the Flipout was rooted using APK applications such as Superuser Permissions.
The Flipout replaces the bigger Backflip. The specifications according to the Motorola website as of October 2010 are: