With Motorola's mobile hopes pinned heavily on the Cliq, the company's first smartphone on the Google Android platform, T-Mobile Tuesday announced the launch and pricing details of the forthcoming handset.

Going by the information forwarded by T-Mobile, the Motorola Cliq will become available to present T-Mobile customers October 19 onwards; and to new customers from November 2. The device, to be sold in T-Mobile stores, will be priced at $200 fro a two-year contract, including a voice and data plan.

In comparison to the prices of rival smartphones, the Cliq's $200 price-tag is at par with the iPhone 3GS; but is $20 higher than the Android-based SprintHTC Hero; and $100 higher than the Palm Pre price.

However, the best part of the well-designed Motorola Cliq is that it will be the first phone to incorporate the singular Motorola custom interface 'Motoblur', which combines all the social networking and communications tools of the users into one interface. In addition, the Android platform also gives Cliq a one-touch access to Google mobile services like Google Maps, Picasa and Google Search by voice.

The other notable features of the Cliq are a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard; 3.1-inch touchscreen; 3G; five-megapixel camera with autofocus and playback video capture at 24-frames-per- second; a music player shaped for Amazon's mp3 store; WiFi; 2 GB memory, expandable up to 32 GB; and a 3.5 mm headset jack.