Motorola Milestone 2 review

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Motorola Milestone 2 review

Visually, the Motorola Milestone 2 hasn’t changed much from its original incarnation. It’s exactly the same size and shape as the original Milestone (or ‘Droid’ in the US), measur¬ing 60x116x14mm and weighing 169g.

This sleek black and chrome smart¬phone has retained its 3.7in touchscreen display, which supports multitouch, as well as the slide-out qwerty keyboard. However, while the device might initially look the same, Motorola has made some changes for the better.

To begin with, the four-way controller on the keyboard has been ditched in favour of four cursor keys, making the other keys larger. They’ve been raised too.
We found the touchscreen was very responsive and needed only the lightest of touches. The keyboard keys are on the hard side, and not as comfortable for typing as we’d have hoped, but they’ll be a welcome addition for those who struggle with the size of onscreen keypads.

The Milestone 2 now features a 1GHz processor, providing a fair jump in speed compared to the original 550MHz chip. This makes the device faster at processing commands and loading software.

This Motorola runs the latest version of the Google Android OS, version 2.2 {‘Froyo’). Among the new features sup¬ported are Adobe Flash Player and voice-to-text controls. To compose emails or text messages this way you just press the microphone icon and start speaking your message. The phone will translate your voice into text, so you don’t have to worry about the accuracy of your typing. Another helpful solution for business users is a text message business.

The theoretical benefit of this facility is clear, but in practice we found voice-to-text fairly slow at translating what we said. The results weren’t always a success, although that might be down to this reviewer’s south London accent. While we like the feature in principle, we do think it’s more suited to occasional short text messages than long emails.

The Wi-Fi implementation has been updated to ensure the handset now sup-ports the latest standards. Motorola also gives users the ability to turn their handset into a 3G hotspot: when Wi-Fi connectivity is turned on, up to five devices can connect to the phone and access the web through its 3G connec-tion, network permitting.

Like its predecessor, the Milestone 2 supports microSD cards up to 32GB, but with a larger internal memory (8GB) users can get a total of 40GB. This means there’s plenty of room to store pics snapped on the phone’s 5Mp camera, which comes with a dual LED flash and autofocus.

The images we captured were clear and sharp, pretty much what we’ve come to expect from today’s smart¬phones. You’ll also find image stabilisation, real-time colour effects, geo-tagging, and basic in-phone edit¬ing functions such as crop and rotate.

The Connected Media Player displays song lyrics and artist informa¬tion for a track that’s being played. There’s no FM radio, but via 3G or Wi-Fi you can use the Milestone 2 to listen to internet radio stations.

Another neat feature that’s unique to Motorola phones is Motoblur. This service, also seen on the Defy, lets you get updates from your various social networking accounts and online photo services – Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and so on – plus your Outlook email and webmail, and sychronise the lot.
This new model has some wel¬come improvements. Faster and with even more useful functions for both business and social networking, the Milestone 2 is a great Android phone.

Motorola Milestone 2 specs:

General
Network 2G : GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G : HSDPA 1900 / 2100

Operating System v2.2, Android OS (Froyo)

Size
Dimensions 116.3 x 60.5 x 13.7 mm
Weight 169 g

Display
Type 16M colors, TFT capacitive touchscreen
Size/Resolution 3.7 inches, 480 x 854 pixels
Others – Multi-touch input method
– QWERTY keyboard
– MOTOBLUR UI with Live Widgets
– Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate
– Swype input method
– Proximity sensor for auto turn-off

Sound
Alert Type Polyphonic, Vibration, MP3, WAV ringtones
Audio Player WAV/ MP3/ WMA/ AAC+ Player
Headset Jack – 3.5 mm audio jack
Speaker Yes

Memory
Internal Upto 8 GB
External Upto 32GB, 8GB included, microSD
CPU 1 GHz processor
RAM 512 MB

Battery
Type Li-Po 1400 mAh (BP6X), Standard battery
Stand-by Upto 350 hours
Talk Time Upto 6 hours

Camera
Still Images 5 Mega Pixels
Resolution: 2592х1944 pixels, dual-LED flash, autofocus
Video Recording Yes, 720p, Frame Rate: 30fps
Video Call No
Video Player WMV/ MP4/ H.263/ H.264/ DivX/ XviD Player
Others Features: Face detection, Geo-tagging, touch focus

Data and Internet
GPRS 32 – 48 kbps, Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots)
Infrared port No
Bluetooth A2DP with v2.1
3G HSDPA
USB v2.0, microUSB
Browser HTML
Email Yes, Push Email
EDGE 236.8 kbps, Class 10
WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA
GPS with A-GPS support

Features
Messaging MMS, SMS (threaded view), IM
Games Yes + downloadable
Colors Black
FM Radio No
Java Via third party application

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Editor in Chief with passion for gadgets and web technology. He is writing gadget news, covering mobile gear, apps and concept devices.

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