Motorola Milestone Review (part two)

Available from www.clove.co.uk for £398.33

I have spent more time playing with the Milestone so far than almost any other phone I have reviewed in the past year. It is a schizophrenic mix of oddly shaped hardware and an OS which keeps me coming back for more and as such I am struggling with my feelings towards this phone. I normally split my reviews into paragraphs looking at each feature of the phone and in this case it is very apt because there are some marked differences between each function which all come together to make a phone the like of which I have not seen before.

Screen

The screen is lovely to use and works well in all conditions, but it does seem to attract smudges very easily and within minutes a thin film of finger stuff was laying over the screen. I could eventually remove it, but if ever a phone needs a screen protector it is this one. The sensitivity is good and the WVGA resolution makes everything from the OS interface to video playback a pleasure, but not all third party apps have been scaled to cope with it yet. 8/10

Battery

The battery is not something I would have been expecting to be good, but it is very good. In my rather limited tests I have managed to get through two days with no need for charging and this includes constant push email, lots of Wi-Fi surfing and app downloading and some tests with the GPS system. In my experience it is much better than the iPhone 3G as a comparison and seemingly ahead of the HTC Hero. Impressive. 8/10

Data Input

The onscreen keyboard is much better than I expected and as easy to use as the iPhone setup. For someone like me that means it is not easy to use at all, but I am someone who will never get on with QWERTY touch screen keyboards because I need to do too much quick data entry during a standard day. Fortunately there is the slide-out hardware keyboard which could be so much better than it is. The strange placement, the horrible gold navigation button and the small flush keys make the typing experience slow and often inconvenient. It doesn’t always seem to fit the OS either and at times I was getting lost in data input fields. It is such a shame that the keyboard functionality appears to have taken second string to keeping the device slim. 6/10

Connectivity

All good here apart from the occasional lag on some web pages when the Milestone doesn’t quite seem to realise that it is using a 3G SIM card. The GPS antenna strength is very good and pickup was almost immediate when using it in MOTONAV or for GPS enabled apps. All in all, there is nothing missing here and I found most connectivity aspects, especially Wi-Fi, to work flawlessly. 8/10

Browsing

The web browsing experience is exceptional and despite some small issues with having to manually set the width of text it is probably the best mobile browser I have used to date. This is the first phone I have used which offers a sense of the real internet on a mobile phone. Compatibility with many web standards also makes it ideal for managing secure web services wherever you are. 9/10

Camera

The camera specs promise a lot of sort of deliver. I was pleased with the video capture quality outdoors, but inside they sometimes came out grainy with poor colour definition. It is a similar story for the stills camera, but it is possible to capture some exceptional shots if you have the time. Time is a factor because it is also not the quickest camera in the world either. 7/10

Entertainment

Music playback is very good and I was fairly impressed with the included headset, and this translated well to the mobile video experience. The navigation of music and video files could be better and downloading an app or two will help you out here. Ultimately it is the quality that counts and as such I have to rate it highly in this section. 8/10

Apps

Third party apps are the major battleground in the smartphone race at this time and Android is starting to encroach very slightly into Apples dominance in this area. Actually on second thoughts it isn’t, but my first few days with the Milestone suggests that the quality is improving all of the time and in the Android Market. I found many free apps and games of good enough quality to keep them installed and there are examples of games which rival the iPhone in quality. More time is needed here, but the potential is great looking forward. 8/10

Tomorrow I will finalise this review by looking at the remaining features, including the all important OS experience, and concluding my overall thoughts on the Milestone.