MR LENNY'S SMARTPHONE BLOG: Motorola Droid/Milestone Review

Motorola Droid/Milestone Review

Posted in | at 15:18

Firstly this is my first Mobile Phone review so bare with me! Right, Secondly there will be many comparisons with the iPhone 3GS for two reasons, 1. it’s the phone i owned at the time of receiving the Milestone. 2. Motorola/Verizon in the states have purposely pit this device against the iPhone with its Various advertisements (if you haven’t seen them jump on YouTube!) 3. The Droid/Milestone is Androids (at the time of writing) flag ship device.

Specifications (taken from tracy&matt.co.uk)

·
Dimensions: 115.8 x 60 x 13.7mm

· Weight: 165g

· Battery:
- Talk Time: 6.5 hrs
- Standby Time: 380 hrs
- Capacity: 1400 mAh

· Display: 480 x 854 pixels/3.7" / Touch Sensitive(Capacitive) / MultiTouch

· Network: 2G: 850/900/1800/1900 (Quad-Band) / 3G: 900/2100 (Dual-Band)

· Camera: 5 mega-pixels (auto-focus)

· Dual LED Flash

· GeoTagging

· Video: DVD Quality Video Recording 24fps Video Recording (720 x 480)

· Music: Supported formats: MP3, AAC, eAAC+, OGG & WMA

· 550MHz TI OMAP 3430 CPU

· Memory: RAM 256MB, FLASH ROM 512MB, USER STORAGE 256MB

· microSDHC (external)

· microUSB

· Accelerometer/G-meter

· 3.5mm Audio Connector

· Bluetooth (2.1)

· Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11g)

· Navigation: AGPS / Digital Compass

Unboxing

As you can see as soon as you slide off the main cover you get a glimpse of the phone, it was well fitted inside the grove so I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have fell out if I was slightly reckless.

I know many people care about how products are boxed so let me go into slight detail, the Packaging/Box is nothing like the minimalistic and expensive feel of the iphone 3gs’s , Although the box was smaller than I anticipated, it defiantly has a cheaper look and feel to it when compared to the iPhone’s unboxing experience, BUT the box is where the cheapness tag ends as you’ll read later, It’s just a standard box here really. When you lift the lip covering the phone you then gain access to the device, the device itself certainly has that wow factor in my opinion but we’ll come back to that later too.

When you lift the section where the phone was placed you gain access to the accessories and Manual etc.

In the box you get

·         Micro USB Charger (The Micro USB Cable that comes with the phone is the lead you attach to the charger)
·         Micro USB Cable
·         Wired headset/earphones (Extra foam buds are included)
·         Getting Started Guide
·         CD ROM
·         8gb Micro SD Card is pre installed in the device, but I thought I would mention it here. It does not come with an adapter to plug it straight into your computer unfortunately.
·         1400 mAh Battery

More pictures below

The Device

I’ll take you around the device quickly

Top of the device

3.5mm headphone jack, right next to that is the power/standby button

Right hand side of the device

Dedicated camera button & Volume rocker

Left Hand side of the device

Micro usb port

Bottom of the device

Nothing

Back of the device

The camera & speaker grill

The Design

Let’s get the design of the device, personally I think it’s fantastic! From the golden highlights to the unusual lip at the bottom. It’s very different to many of the smart phones out there now with silver bezels and the like. The phone has a very industrial look, you could say slightly old school. The first thing that comes to your attention is the superb 3.7" display. Underneath the display are 4 touch sensitive buttons, these do have their downfalls. For example when you’re in the dark and the backlight on the touch sensitive buttons have gone out and you want to push one of the buttons its a complete guessing game which button your pressing or if your pressing at button at all! I have not come across the option in menus to rectify this issue unfortunately.

The camera button looks great but is very flimsy and doesn’t match the rest of the build quality of the device. It’s a heavy device which is to be expected, it’s made out of metal which adds to the feel and quality of the device, it makes you feel as though your handling a high end device which is fine by me, the battery cover is slightly rubberised for grip purposes, the golden speaker grill runs from one side of the device to the other and looks great. At the top of the device you have the power button which doubles up as a standby button. This can be hard to find at times when you’re not looking but over time I’m sure you’ll get used to it.

It’s a very slim device considering it houses a full slide out QWERTY keyboard, the keyboard mechanism is the best I’ve come across. It doesn’t feel like it will break or become loose at any time and it snaps open with considerable satisfaction. Many reviewers and owners don’t like the keyboard because it’s very flush and there’s no keyboard spacing so determining what key your pressing at times is very difficult especially if you have large fingers. My fingers are quite thin so this really isn’t an issue. It’s not the greatest keyboard but certainly not the worse.

I’m unsure why Motorola couldn’t include an extra row of keys as the device only slides half way up, almost certainly a design flaw

There’s a LED which flashes green when you have a notification like Missed Calls or Text Messages, and flashes purple when you receive other type of notifications like IM’s. It’s only a small LED and it’s no way as bright as say the Blackberry Curve 8900 I owned which would light up the whole room when it was dark. But it does the job.

The earpiece is a thin strip above the Motorola sign and the MIC is on the lip of the device.

Back to the display, it is absolutely phenomenal. The Sharpness, density, colours, brightness and accuracy (regarding touch) of the screen is top notch. Certainly better than the iPhone in the visual department and on par in the capacitive touch department.

See below for more pictures of the device, comparisons in dimension to the iPhone & the Display.

Firstly, apologies for the poor pictures, my camera and photography skills are not the best! As you can see the Milestone is just a tad bigger than the Iphone, considering the size of the screen and the hardware keyboard the size doesn’t surprise me. I expected it to be bigger so that was a nice surprise.

The Milestone runs on a 550mhz processor accompanied by 256mb ram, let me just get something out of the way first. When switching home screens, bringing up the menu and pulling down the notifications bar there is a little lag. This is has proved to be purely a software issue. There has been a footage of someone operating the new GOOGLE Phone/Nexus one and it looked very speedy, I wondered if that was down to the 1ghz snapdragon processor or purely because it’s a new version of android and they fixed the lag/responsiveness issues. A few days later I saw a video of the same 2.1 software running on a Motorola droid (America’s equal to the Milestone) and it looked just as fast and responsive. We should be seeing that update officially early next year.

Android 2.0

I won’t go to deep into Android 2.0 as I’m going to write up another review solely focusing on Android 2.0, that and I’m having issues setting up the screenshot application so I cant take you through the menus and so forth with images.

I’m a complete Android noob by the way but my 1^st impressions of Android were very very positive. I’ve come from the Windows mobile scene originally and then briefly the iPhone OS. Android seems like a merger between the 2, Multi-tasking is a dream, the OS looks fantastic and is very User Friendly just like the iPhone.

I’ve never used Gmail/Google account before but i needed a way to transfer my contacts from the iphone to the Milestone because there was no “Copy contacts to SIM” function on the iPhone, I knew the Milestone supported Google Sync so I uploaded my contacts info to iTunes which in turn uploaded them to my newly created Gmail account.

I entered my Gmail account into the Milestone and then pressed sync, my contacts appeared almost instantly, I was impressed. As i said earlier, I’ll do a sole review on Android itself real soon so don’t be disappointed if this section is not very in depth.

Main Features

Call quality on the Milestone is fine, loud and clear. There were no complaints from people on the other end of my calls. I receive better reception on the Milestone than i did on my iPhone too. The speakerphone is also perfectly fine and clear .

Browsing the internet on the Milestone is a pleasure thanks to the fantastic high-res screen. In some instances where you would have needed to zoom in on the iPhone you don’t need to on the Milestone. The capacitive screen is very accurate. Tapping very small links more often than not work 1^st time. You get the Address bar at the top with the bookmark button on the right of the address bar, pressing the touch sensitive menu bar gives you access to the windows you have open, saved bookmarks, the option to open a new window, refresh. Clicking on “more” gives you a deeper selection of settings to tailor your browsing needs. Pages loaded quickly over both WIFI & 3G.

Playing music on the Milestone is a joy, Audio is clear and crisp (I’m using some sennheisers i bought yesterday) you wouldn’t be let down if you used this as your main on the go music source. (although you may want to upgrade to a bigger Micro SD card as Milestone only comes with a 8gb card) The only thing it lacks is the polish of Apples well established ipod interface. Androids/The Milestones is very basic looking. I’ve not had a chance to use the bundled media link software which somehow works in conjunction with iTunes, but drag and drop works just fine for me and I prefer it. The bundled earphones are what you would expect, not as good as your own earphones. Although I’ve seen some horrible bundled earphones in my time and these are definitely on the better side. I also used my Sony Bluetooth headphones and they paired up fine although i could hear a slight hiss in the background when no music was playing, but other than that there was no difference in audio quality between the iphone 3gs and the milestone when using my Bluetooth Headphones. You can also control your music from the headset. Pause, skip tracks, control the volume etc.

Videos look great and are handled very well as you would expect on a screen of this quality and size, although the Milestone surprisingly doesn’t come bundled with a Video player but you can easily download one from the app store. The native youtube application is very good, on par with the Windows Mobile version & the iPhones, there's a choice of high quality or low quality options when viewing videos, they load quickly and look great.

The camera is a letdown, there’s auto focusing issues and the images half the time look washed out, I’ll upload sample pictures for you guys. It also takes an age for the phone to save the image and get the device ready to take the next picture. Coming from the the iPhone 3GS which has probably the best smartphone camera I’ve encountered when it comes to convenience and taking quick snaps. The Milestone definitely loses out here. You can take good pictures but not at the success rate I would like. You need a few tries before you get the perfect picture, the iPhone is normally just once. I’ve heard the issue is software related and the hardware is capable (a fix should be available son)

The camcorder/video recording function is a very different story, it’s extremely good and better than the iphone 3gs in that department , we all know the iphone 3gs’s video recording capabilities are not bad at all either. I took a sample video this morning that i will upload for you guys. Videos are recorded at a good frame rate and quality.

Regarding GPS, America have got the Google Navigation Beta app which is basically a free GPS Navigation application like your Tom Toms and so forth, from the videos I’ve seen its very very impressive and won’t be long before it hits the UK. So all you Sat Nav makers better watch out, Googles coming! The milestone comes pre installed with MOTO NAV, I haven’t had a chance to use it but from videos I’ve seen it does the job well enough.

The app store is better than i expected, not on par with the iphones obviously but there’s around 20,000 applications in there now and growing, a good majority of the apps in the market free. I’m going to go slightly off topic here, The hardware keyboard is very useful when it comes to playing games, I use it for playing Super Nintendo games and it’s a joy, full screen, full speed no lag. I’ve not had a chance to play a proper 3-D graphically intensive game but when I do I’ll let you guys know how it performs, there may be examples on Youtube so i suggest you have a look if you’re interested in playing games on the Milestone. The best app I’ve downloaded so far is the Inbetweeners sound board, absolute genius! But there are plenty of apps to tailor the device to your needs, for productivity and to entertain you.

A major plus point for me is the ability to customize the home screens of my device, there’s 3 in total. (Android 2.1 has 5, and I’m sure HTC Sense UI handsets have 5 to) there’s all different types of widgets, pictures and short cuts you can have to tailor the device to look how YOU want it. Apple do not allow customization on its devices unless you go down the warranty voiding route of jail braking, and even then the customization of the home screen isn’t that great.

Conclusion

This is a fantastic device, is it better than the iPhone? No. There will never be a “iPhone Killer” that slogan is played out and just puts added expectation on the manufacturer and device. Apple now has the biggest market share when it comes to smartphones and i doubt they will rest on the laurels. But, in my opinion the Motorola Milestone certainly can stand proudly next to the iPhone as one of the top smartphones in a very competitive market.

Me personally i like the whole experience of customizing and tinkering my device, i don’t like being restricted either. I like my device to be different than everyone else’s. When your using something everyday you want it set up and to look like how you want and vision it, this is possible with Android but not the iPhone unfortunately. That may not bother you, or be a minor thing to you but not to myself and many others. You even have Mobile phone manufactures themselves customising the Android UI and coming up with some superb efforts so they can deliver an experience that they see for that device. (Sense UI anyone?) And not forgetting the up & coming Rachael UI on the X10 running Android.

The Music player really has swayed me into keeping the Milestone as my number 1 device, i’m a huge music fan so even though Android as a whole has impressed me if the Music player/Audio output on this device wasn’t up to par i would have got another iPhone 3GS.

As for Motorola, they seemed to be down and out before they released the Cliq and then the Droid/Milestone, there own in house UI was terrible but they always made great high quality handsets. So the success they are now seeing with the Cliq and Milestone is no suprise to me.

Android is clearly going to go from strength to strength, the smartphone industry is very exciting at the moment with Android emerging as a very capable OS to rival the Windows mobile and the iPhone OS. But now they have the hardware to truely match the potential they are showing with the Milestone, and then even more so with the up and coming Nexus One.

Thanks for reading,

MR LENNY

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