Motorola Milestone

Product: Motorola MILESTONE
Website: http://www.motorola.com/Milestone
System Specifications : Android 2.0, 3.7-inch 480x854 touch screen display, slide-out Qwerty keyboard, 5MP Camera, 3.5mm audio jack, Quad-band GSM, 8GB microSD card, Bluetooth, WiFi, AGPS, microUSB
Price: £449.99

MOTOROLA WAS ALL but written off as a mobile phone maker as it hadn't produced a single handset in nearly a year. As if from nowhere it came back from the brink of obscurity with the touch screen Dext, with its slide-out Qwerty keyboard and social media functionality. This arrival was closely followed by the Milestone, which offers a similar feature set only supporting a sleeker overall appearance.

As with the last handset, the Milestone also runs the Google Android mobile phone operating system. The version running the phone is the latest iteration, Android 2.0, with this being the first handset to arrive out-of-the-box with that installed.

This latest update to Android looks and feels much like any other vanilla deployment with its three customisable home screens. However, there have been some improvements to a few key areas. These fall into the realms of native Microsoft Exchange support, a better UI and browser experience along with a much improved virtual keyboard. The latter is almost a bit of a moot point with physical keyboards, but the browser's 'pinch to zoom' plus full HTML viewing works much better than on other phones. The zoom feature was left out of the US Droid version of the mobile, where missing from the European model is the Google turn-by-turn navigation software which was replaced by Motorola's own sat nav. The plus side to this is no other phone has the Google mapping software either so what we don't know we won't miss, also all the Motorola maps are based on the phone and they're not pulled down over the air.

One item missing from the Milestone that was first seen on the Dext is the Motoblur, which is an overlay to the Android OS much the same way as the Sense is on HTC Android mobiles. Besides expanding the number of screens available for widgets there's an in-built engine, for displaying social networking updates on the home screen. Motoblur also offers up great security for the handset, where it's possible to track the mobile's every movement through Google Maps, along with being able to back up all the phones' contents into the cloud. If the phone is ever lost or stolen, the handset can be remotely wiped of all data and the content restored to a new mobile. Other redeeming features that were available on the Dext but not the Milestone are the phone book's synchronisation, where Facebook and Gmail contacts are automatically populated throughout the address book in an intelligent way. We contacted Motorola to ask why this was missing from the Milestone, with its response being that it is not aiming this phone at the same market as the Dext. We firmly believe those elements of security would be a useful addition for anyone, not just social networkers.

A feature we haven't seen before is the Moto Phone Portal, a remote way of accessing the phone through a web browser on a computer. When launching the application on the handset the user is presented with an option to connect via USB or WiFi, with the latter producing an IP address and port. From here you are able to view call info on the phone from a PC based browser, see and export the address book from the phone, and also view and send text messages. It could be seen as a little bit gimmicky, but we actually found it rather useful in the end and especially when sending text messages.

Motorola's Milestone has one of the largest screens we've seen on a mobile along with being the largest on any shipping Android handset today. It has a massive 3.7-inch 480x854 WVGA capacitive touchscreen display, with the slightest touch being very well interpreted with pinpoint accuracy. It's a far cry from the small hit and miss 3.2-inch resistive screen we last saw on the HTC Android Tattoo mobile. The Samsung i8910 HD also boasts the same screen size as the Milestone, only with a much lower 360x640 resolution. LG's Crystal handset does have a similar resolution of 480x800, only on a 3-inch screen with the larger Milestone display coming across much better in every respect.

Motorola has gone on record in claiming the Milestone is the thinnest handset with a full Qwerty slide out keyboard around today. The Android based handset does fare well in size against the previous Motorola Dext mobile, whose dimensions come in at 16mm thick, 114mm in length and 58mm in width. Whereas the Milestone form factor does boast a slimmer build of 13.7mm deep, a slightly longer body of 115.8mm and 60mm width. It is much thinner than the HTC Pro2, a touch screen keyboard device that measures 116mm in length, with a width of 59.2mm and a massive 17.25mm depth. That does look rather dated now, even though the phone only arrived last July.

The physical keyboard on the Milestone slides stiffly out from under the screen. Its keys are all laid out very close together and they are very flat too. We discovered we could easily hold the phone with the keyboard exposed between two hands, while using the thumbs alone for typing. All this was comfortable enough, if only reaching the keys on the left was achievable with great ease, which it wasn't. This is all down to the inclusion of a frankly unnecessary four-way control d-pad on the right, which forces the keyboard from being dead centre. Typing on the touch screen in landscape mode was a pleasure with its very wide display. Thanks must go here to Android 2.0, with its better auto-completion and spell checking that isn't available when the physical keyboard is in use.

The mobile runs on an ARM Cortex A8 processor clocked at 550MHz. This is about half the speed of the fastest Snapdragon chip in other phones, but the Milestone appears faster in operation than its beefier counterparts thanks to the Android OS. On board is a small amount of addressable memory at 197MB, but not to worry as Motorola has thrown in an 8GB microSD card with the device also having been tested successfully on the upcoming 32GB version. Onboard is a 5 megapixel camera with a dual LED flash. The photos taken were a bit hit and miss in terms of quality and the image autofocus leaves much to be desired, but we're hearing there's a hot fix any day now to help clear that up.

Motorola has included a 3.5mm audio jack on the top of the handset. Having the socket located there means it sits comfortably in a pocket without having the headphone jack jut out from the side. Phones such as the Blackberry Storm and Storm 2 have their audio sockets located rather awkwardly on the side where it's uncomfortable to have headphones connected as a result. Just try the two formats over a day's use and you'll see why we applaud mobile phone makers who get this right.

Battery life on touchscreen devices with a physical Qwerty keyboard has traditionally not been all that great in the past, as both aspects have to be powered and both can be heavy power draws. To produce the more slim line form factor of the Milestone we would have thought the battery size would have been compromised, but we are happy to say we would have been wrong.

Accompanying the Motorola Milestone is a 1400mAh battery, which proved to have some might behind it as our tests discovered. Over the course of a long day while still fetching quite a lot of emails into Gmail, the handset managed to last for nine hours and five minutes worth of calls. This is the longest battery life we've seen in any handset, trumping the HTC Snap Blackberry-esque mobile of eight hours and forty-five minutes which held our previous record.

In Short
Calling only your second handset to hit the shelves in nearly a year the ‘Milestone' seems a bit of a wild claim, unless Motorola was being ironic, which we very much doubt. Putting aside the humorous name there were actually some milestones to be seen with the handset. It's the first to arrive with Android 2.0, and it's the thinnest physical Qwerty keyboard handset around and also has the longest battery life. We found the keyboard to be a tad awkward to use, whilst preferring the touchscreen and the improved virtual keyboard of Android 2.0, with its better auto completion and spell-checking functionality. It's good to see the latest Google mobile OS on a phone, but it is just a vanilla installation without any frills or niceties. Missing is the Motoblur rich feature set seen in the Dext handset, with its peace of mind security measures and social networking functionality. Due to its much sleeker design and appearance, Motorola could be aiming the mobile at the corporate world, which would make sense with the Motoblur missing and the native Microsoft Exchange support.

The Good
Android 2.0, large responsive touchscreen, long battery life.

The Bad
Google turn by turn mapping software is missing, keyboard is a tad awkward to use.

The Ugly
Missing Motoblur Android overlay.

Bartender's Report
8/10