The Motorola Milestone Smartphone
A powerful smartphone, the Motorola Milestone was announced in November 2009, along with the Motorola DEXT, the Milestone represents a significant new chapter for Motorola.
The Milestone is an impressive device, and it is undoubtedly a nice thing to own. But it does have some problems which may just be enough to tempt you to look at the rival Apple iPhone 3GS or the Nokia N900.
Strong points for the Motorola Milestone include the excellent display, robust feel, flexible Android software, capable GPS and fast processor, weak points were the shocking lack of tethering capabilities and the poor camera.
The Motorola Milestone contains a microSD card (8GB), a BP6X battery, a USB cable that also charges the phone, a power adapter to plug the USB cable into, a stereo wired headset, a software CD and a small manual.
The Motorola Milestone is a thick black slab of a phone which isn’t particularly big, but at 170 grams it is quite heavy. The reason for this weight is partly due to the large screen and the slide-out QWERTY keyboard, but a closer examination seems to show that there are quite solid plastics and metal components in the phone, giving it a feeling of quality engineering.
Flip the phone onto its back, and it’s a fairly plain design with an “M” logo and the 5 megapixel camera and flash tucked away discretely in one corner. A tight-fitting cover hides the large battery, SIM card and the microSD card which annoyingly isn’t hot swappable as you have to remove the battery to get at it.
The slider mechanism is quite stiff, but feels robust. Underneath is a small QWERTY keyboard with a retro looking navigation pad. Sliding open the keyboard automatically changes the screen orientation from portrait to landscape.
It’s a multitouch display, so for example you can zoom into a web page by touching the screen with two fingers and then pulling them apart. This takes a little getting used to. Because the Milestone doesn’t use a stylus, the screen does tend to pick up fingerprints – but not very quickly, and it is easy to wipe it clean.
Underneath the screen are four touch sensitive buttons for “back”, “menu”, “home” and “search” which vibrate slightly when you press them. At first, you will find that it’s very easy to press these buttons by accident, but practice with the phone makes it less likely.
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