AT&T locks Motorola Backflip to avoid non-market apps (USA)

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: In order to prevent subscribers from installing non-market apps from unknown sources, the new Android-powered Motorola Backflip smartphone has been locked by telecom operator, AT&T. In the previous Android devices from rival U.S. operators, support for non-market apps as a default option was available.

Earlier, instead of releasing the Backflip with Google’s own search tool, AT&T released it with Yahoo as its default mobile search engine, thus breaking away from Android convention. Google was installed as a default search engine in most and if not all previous Android devices launched in the U.S.

However, Motorola earlier offered Chinese consumers the option to select Baidu as their primary search service.