Motorola and T-Mobile USA recently starting pushing out the new 1.4.18 version of firmware for the Motorola CLIQ according to the T-Mobile USA Forums.  In spite of the fact that the post on the site says that users can manually check for an update, two CLIQs we have access to have neither received the update automatically or are able to force an update with a manual check.

According to the post on T-Mobile’s forums, the update offers the following benefits:

• Improved battery life
• Improved software performance and stability
• Improved home screen
• Improved widget response
• Decrease in ‘Force Close’ error messages
• Added support of .WMA and .WAV media files

I’ll let you know more about the real world impact of the firmware once I get my CLIQ updated. Stay tuned, and if you have already received the update for your CLIQ, leave a comment and let the rest of us know how it went.

Update: Another manual check some hours later resulted in the first of two updates getting installed. The first brought the phone to 1.4.2, the second to 1.4.8. I’ve not noticed any new features or anything so far, but it seems much snappier on the homescreen now. A bigger improvement than I saw with the 1.3.18 update, for sure.

Update 2: Here is a link to the official Motorola list of bug fixes and enhancements in firmware 1.4.8.