Long time no see: Before Motorola introduced the new smartphone Milestone, the last Motorola phones we have seen being launched in Germany were ROKR E8 and Z10 – that was in January 2008. Now, it seems as if Motorola has found its sheet anchor with new Android and Windows Mobile smartphones. The first Android smartphone is the Droid which has been launched in Germany in November 2009 as the Motorola Milestone. In Germany, the Motorola Milestone is available at Vodafone stores for EUR 499.90 or at O2 Germany stores for EUR 481.00 without contract. My judgement after having testing the Motorola Milestone for a short time: With a great touchscreen, a real QWERTZ keyboard and the Android 2.0 operating system the Milestone is surely the most powerful Android smartphone currently available, but multimedia capabilities trail behind other smartphones.

The feature list of the Motorola Milestone is quite impressive: 3.7-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 854 x 480 pixels, real QWERTZ keyboard, 5-megapixel camera with video capture, music player with 3.5-millimeter headset jack on the phone’s top end, 300 MB internal storage capacity and microSD memory card support of up to 32 GB, UMTS and HSPA for mobile data transmissions, WiFi support for connecting to the web at hotspots and A-GPS for mobile navigation and other location based services.

Compared to other smartphones the Motorola Milestone is rather big and heavy. On the one hand, the slider mechanism is a bit sluggish, on the other hand the faceplate slides easily back. On the front face there are no physical controls, except for the power control, the camera shutter and a volume control for the integrated music player. In addition, there are four touch controls below the display for opening the homescreen, for opening the main menu, opening the search menu or for going back in the menu or for o there are four touch controls. For starting and terminating phone calls there is no physical control as on previous Android smartphones but a widget on the homescreen to call up the phone dialer. This means: When viewing a web page the user has to close the browser first in order to make a phone call.

The large capacitive touchscreen is bright and brilliant and shows vibrant colors and sharp graphics. Like the Apple iPhone it supports multitouch and offers vibrating feedback for certain functions. Due to the accelerometer content can be displayed either in portrait or in landscape mode. When the user opens the slider, the screen orientation changes automatically. Because of the touchscreen’s size and format, it is fun to surf the internet and to view regular websites.

Responsiveness of the touchscreen is good. It is possible to customize the brightness and the backlighting time of the display and to switch off the accelerometer and the haptic feedback. Typing on the QWERTZ keyboard of the Motorola Milestone is not as comfortable as with some other smartphones. The keys are small, slick and flush. At first, the user of the Motorola Milestone will probably struggle with mistyping.

The user interface offers three homescreens which can be customized with widgets, shortcuts and folders. The design of the menu looks familiar to Android users and offers no surprises. Naturally, Google services such as Google Mail, Google Talk, Google Maps, Android Market and Youtube take center-stage. At the moment, it is not possible to use the Google Maps Navigation application in Germany. However, the Motorola Milestone is the first phone in the German market based on Android 2.0 and offers – in addition to the virtual phone dialer – some new features such as a business calendar, a Facebook and a Youtube widget and a power saving function for turning off wireless connections or dimming the display’s brightness. Android 2.0 updates cannot be retrieved via wireless phone connection, just by USB connection from the PC.

Motorola Milestone, Pictures: GermanPhoneGuy

Other features of the Motorola Milestone are out of the box support of Microsoft Exchange Activesync synchronisation of email, calendar and contacts, push-delivery for Google Mail, quasi-push-delivery for other POP3 and IMAP accounts. Messages from different accounts are displayed in one unified inbox. Also, contact information from various accounts are merged in the phone book. However, this is not possible for the personal and a work life calendar – there is no integrated view for them.

While the sound of the music player is good enough, the quality of snapshots and videos shot with the 5-megapixel camera is comparatively poor. On the other hand and more importantly, voice quality is good. Battery life is clearly worse than that of the Apple iPhone.

Product Summary of the Motorola Milestone:
Operating System: Android 2.0
GSM Networks: 850, 900, 1,800, 1,900 MHz
Data Transfer: GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA, HSUPA, WiFi
Connectivity: Bluetooth, USB
Screen: 3.7-inch Touchscreen with 854 x 480 pixels resolution and 16.7 million colors
Keyboard: QWERTZ
Camera: 5-megapixel with autofocus and video capture (720 x 480 pixels)
Storage: 300 MB, expendable by 32 GB microSD
Weight: 165 g
Size: 115.8 x 60 x 13.7 mm
Speaking Time: 6.5 hrs