Motorola MILESTONE 2 review: Landmark droid

Introduction

The MILESTONE 2 has a single mission – to reclaim the top spot in Android messengers for Motorola. It has the pedigree and the personality, and with the right upgrades, it seems a lock to become the next all-in-one messenger of choice.

Who can blame Motorola? They liked it at the top of the Android food chain and want to relive the good times. Less in a mood to experiment, they know exactly where they’re going and the MILESTONE 2 might well be the phone to get them there.

Motorola MILESTONE 2 official photos

The MILESTONE 2 has the right measure of metal on the outside and beefed up internals – both hardware and software. There are a few omissions too but not too close to being deal breakers. Here they all are, in a summarized form.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G with HSDPA and HSUPA support
• 3.7" 16M-color capacitive touchscreen with WVGA (480x 854 pixels) resolution
• Scratch-resistant Gorilla glass
• One of the slimmest QWERTY side sliders
• TI OMAP3630 1GHz CPU, PowerVR SGX530 graphics accelerator; 512MB of RAM
• Android OS v2.2; MOTOBLUR UI 1.5 with SNS integration
• Web browser with Adobe Flash 10.1 support
• 5 MP autofocus camera with dual-LED flash; face detection, geo-tagging
• 720p HD video recording @ 30fps
• Wi-Fi b/g/n; Wi-Fi hotspot functionality; DLNA
• GPS with A-GPS; Digital compass
• 8GB storage; microSD slot with 8GB card preinstalled
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor, in-pocket detection with auto lock
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
• Smart and voice dialing
• Office document editor
• Active noise cancellation with a dedicated mic
• DivX/XviD video support

Main disadvantages

• The internal 8GB of storage is for apps only
• Side sliding mechanism is not spring-assisted
• DivX and XviD playback has its issues
• Non hot-swappable microSD card slot
• No FM radio

There’s little missing on the Motorola MILESTONE 2 spec sheet. In actual fact, many of the phone features seem to have a special added quality – Gorilla Glass for the display, 720p video for the 5MP camera, Wi-Fi hotspot for the fast 3G, DLNA for the Wi-Fi connectivity, Flash for the web browser and so on.

Still, the main focus of the MILESTONE 2 is text-based communication – from the humble SMS, through email, to Facebook, Twitter and MySpace messaging there’s little that this messenger droid won’t do.

The Universal inbox is the tool to handle all this. It doesn’t really matter where each message is coming from – they all end up in the same place with a handy reply button to send back a reply on the corresponding network.

Motorola MILESTONE 2 live shots

We’ll rummage through the box for starters and look at the Motorola MILESTONE 2 from all sides with a due inspection of the screen and keyboard. We’ll look at the rest of the hardware and the software too, but first things first.