Motorola Milestone review

A few years ago, Motorola could not be taken seriously, especially in the smartphone arena.

The manufacturer may have brought some of the first mobiles to market, but that didn't stop its success severely waning in the latter part of the decade.

Moto's first Android, the DEXT demonstrated a step in a whole new direction for the US-based manufacturer.

Now, out has popped the Milestone (DROID in the US), and it's even more impressive.

The hardware is the first improvement - the casing is slimmer, albeit larger than the DEXT's. It also feels a lot more solid and premium, mostly due to its heavier weight.

The Qwerty keyboard feels a little cheaper though - it's made of a single panel with the keys separated by a groove. When you type each letter, the neighbouring one moves with it slightly which isn't the most comfortable typing experience.

It also means you lose spacing between the letters, which we became quite fond of on the Nokia N97 Mini.

As is the case with many landscape-sliding devices, the big issue is that there;s not enough space under the screen to comfortably type using the top row of keys. When will manufacturers learn that only a couple of milimetres will make all the difference?

To the right of the keyboard, there's a four-way navigation key that looks as though it may have some touch sensitivity. Unfortunately not - it's simply a hardware button for those who don't like using the touchscreen.

The 480x854 pixel, 3.7-inch capacitive touchscreen itself is fantastic. It responds to every touch and is crisp and bright - just how you want a high-end touchscreen to be.

Below the touchscreen (or to the right if you have the device in landscape mode) on the Milestone are four touch sensitive keys - back, menu, home or search. All are pretty standard, although the search key is probably the most useful.

Not only does the aforesaid button search for files saved on your device, it also rummages through your email and applications to find what you're looking for. If it fails, it will prompt you to carry out a web search.

However, the panel that the display is laid into is not so impressive.

The slide is stiff and hard to use, making us wonder why you'd ever endeavour to use the hardware Qwerty. We think a spring may be needed to make it a smoother operation.

The interface of the Milestone is pretty much standard Android fare, which isn't a disappointment by any margin. There are three homescreens, onto which you can drag and drop widgets.

These can be shortcuts to applications, bookmarks, contacts, a route in MotoNAV, music playlist, Google Mail Label, or folders. In fact, the options are almost endless, ensuring anything you need to access quickly is only a single tap away.

So the Milestone is the first Android device to run the 2.0 upgrade and it brings with it a whole heap of new and exciting features including Exchange support, a combined inbox so you can see emails from multiple accounts in one inbox, a much improved virtual keyboard with multitouch for typing with two hands, and a better predictive text mode.

Although these may seem like pretty small tweaks, it does mean Android is catching up on more developed smartphone operating systems such as the iPhone and BlackBerry. It also means Android is becoming more suitable for business users, where it was once a strictly consumer platform.

It is a shame that Exchange email is dumped in a separate application to Google Mail, and you can't merge the two different types of account, but hopefully this is a feature will be rolled out in a future firmware update.

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