Citrus is a simple phone with functional features by Motorola Inc. It lacks many of the high end features and is very much a beginner Android class phone.

Design

Yet again Motorola came up with a sleek tall design phone in the market with a flavor of Android. It is a smartphone though, minimal design it may possess, it is very easy to handle and fits easily in hand, pocket or a small bag. With its dimensions being as less than 4.09 inches long and 2.32 inches wide and .6 inches deep, it has a wispy feel while holding it.

The right side of it has a volume control and a camera shutter, the former is flatter but one can find it when in a call. The USB charger port sits on the left corner and on the top is a 3.5 mm audio jack. The SD slot is situated beneath the battery cover. The rear side features a camera lens and a navigation pad. By sliding a finger across it, one can swipe through home screens and navigate around the menus. It can be turned on and off from the settings menu.

The LCD is not as bright that one would expect, given its small size. The phone is up for an economical price, but selective smartphone users possibly will be dissatisfied. The menus and virtual dialpad is good and virtual android keyboard is congested. The Citrus has seven home screens, which is not new as it is pretty much featured in every smartphone these days; this allows the user to add up as many widgets, apps one can install.

Just below the display are four conventional navigational controls, menu button, home, back and search. The buttons are very responsive and needs just a soft touch to activate. Further below are two control buttons, the talk button and an end button which also serves as a power button. Both have a rubbery texture giving an overall exotic feel to the phone.

Talking about going green, Citrus is Motorola’s first Green Android phone, where Motorola claims that its free of harmful materials and is carbon free with its packing made up of recycled material.

Features

As one can expect in an Android, the phonebook is pretty much the same, limited by the available only memory. Each contact is associated with multiple entries and a person can select to transmit particular calls to voicemail and back up all contacts with an integrated backup solution.

The Citrus provides the following; caller groups, search, and polyphonic ringtones for Caller ID, with Motorola’s Romancing tone interface. The Citrus runs an Android 2.1 Éclair and a fully revamped Moto blur interface. Éclair works perfectly fine, though Motorola promises to upgrade the phone software to FROYO later this year.

Moto Blur has all the funkiest elements that initially appeared on its Clig debut, but Moto made some tweaks for the citrus. New features are resizable widgets, access to corporate directory, ability to tweet after a tweet with a single touch, better and user friendly filters the Happenings widget. Other than this, Citrus offers a great set of options in texting and mailing. It supports mail from not only Gmail but from many other POP3 servers and private corporate emails.

To sum it all up, this phone is best for users who prefer an easy to use, easy to handle device and usage with on the go widgets and applications, having social networking needs. Motorola seems to drive Citrus for the likes of such.