Though T-Mobile would get out of the 4G phone mad rush going on? Think again. Motorola and T-Mobile have teamed up at CES to announce the successor to their first Android phone together with the 4G Motorola Cliq 2. The original Cliq has been around since September 2009– and if we’ve seen anything over the last two days it’s how quick phones become old– so obviously it was bound for a major upgrade. Thankfully for those who loved the first Cliq’s full QWERTY keyboard and design, it’s still here with a new and improved 2011 spin.

There’ve been a lot of updates to the Cliq 2 from the first Cliq to make it worth your consideration as all you original Cliq owners near upgrade time.

The first thing you’ll notice is the much thinner design. The Cliq 1 wasn’t too big, but it wasn’t necessarily thin either. As you can see in the pic above, the Cliq 2’s gotten a lot thinner. There also is a new “spider web” like design to the keyboard (seen in the top pic), and personally, I think it looks pretty decent (though obviously style here is completely subjective). There also have been bumps to the processor to the now seemingly standard 1 GHZ (a very welcome move nonetheless), Android 2.2 with MOTOBLUR (just like there was on the first Cliq), a much larger and sharper 3.7 inch 854 x 480 screen (in short, a 2011 screen that is a MAJOR step up from the first Cliq’s 3.1 incher), and 3 GB of included storage (1 GB built-in, 2 GB on a microSD card that’s included in the box). Oh, and of course the ability to connect to T-Mobile’s 4G network. One thing that does seem to be missing though is a front camera, which we were really hoping would be standard on these newer 4G phones (apparently not, with the just announced AT&T HTC Inspire 4G and Sprint EVO Shift 4G both also sadly lacking in this department).

It’s no Droid Bionic or Atrix 4G, but overall, if the price is right (below the $149.99 mark in our opinion) this could be a very solid alternative for those that want a T-Mobile 4G phone but not something like a myTouch 4G or G2. We’ll keep our eyes on this one, and you can too– it’ll be out for T-Mobile in just under two weeks, January 19th, for (like seemingly every new CES phone) a price to be named later.

You can see more of the Cliq 2 at Motorola’s site here.