For a phone that seemed to cause such a stir in the US when it launched last year, the Motorola Milestone (called the Droid in the US) has barely raised a ripple this side of the pond. No network has signed up for the device – in fact, only Orange lists Motorola handsets at all in the UK – and while enthusiasts snapped up the first batch from online retailer Expansys before Christmas, it has all gone very quiet since then.
It's easy to see why Motorola might now be feeling a little bit sheepish about its much vaunted iPhone killer. There is a new kid on the block: Google's Nexus One, which sports an updated version of the Android operating system that the Milestone contains, a better screen and a sexier look.
It's also easy to see why Google has got fed up with mobile phone manufacturers putting its increasingly elegant Android software into a bunch of ugly bricks and decided that it needed to be in complete control of its own handset in order to stop the iPhone stealing the smartphone show. From the uninspiring T-Mobile Pulse and the chunky Motorola Dext to the HTC Hero, with its weird "chin", and the temperamental Samsung Galaxy i7500, Android devices have hardly been trend setters.
The Motorola Milestone continues disappointingly in that vein. It is a similar size to the iPhone, though slightly heavier and when placed on its side so that the qwerty keyboard slides out – in an admittedly reassuringly solid manner because the build quality is excellent – it juts out past the screen on the right-hand side. This makes using the keyboard rather awkward as it is off-centre. The screen on the Milestone is inferior to the active-matrix organic LED (AMOLED) touchscreen on the Nexus One, which certainly dazzled our reviewer Bobbie Johnson .
But the Milestone does include multitouch, unlike the Nexus One, Dext and its US variant the Droid. Like all Android devices, however, the Milestone is still waiting for developers to start creating the sort of applications – not least games – that really bring multitouch to life. For an example of what multitouch can become, look no further than the game Eliss being played on an iPhone.
The Milestone is far more responsive than the Motorola Dext – which in my experience suffers from dreadful lag – in part because Motorola's first stab at an Android handset was running version 1.5 of the software as opposed to the Milestone's Android 2.0. The Nexus One, meanwhile, is on Android 2.1. But the Milestone actually represents something of a step backwards for Motorola.
The Dext – sold as the Cliq in the US – included Motoblur, which brought social networking updates direct to the device's homescreen rather like Vodafone's 360 service. But Motoblur is conspicuously absent from the new device.
All the usual Android features are, however, present: email integration is easy, setting up contacts and downloading what applications there are from the Android marketplace is simple. The Milestone also has a better camera than the iPhone – weighing in at 5 megapixels and including a similar variety of bells and whistles, such as flash and a digital zoom, to those included on the Nexus One – but I found it incredibly slow to process images. The Milestone can take a 32GB MicroSD card, the same as the Nexus One. Both the Nexus One and Milestone, meanwhile, allow for multitasking, meaning you can flit between applications without having to close them down, which the iPhone has yet to achieve.
The ultimate question with the Milestone is why bother to buy it when the Nexus One is a better phone? Yes it has a keypad, but anyone who desperately needs a keyboard should just buy a BlackBerry – RIM is the only handset manufacturer that can be trusted to produce one that will not end up inducing carpal tunnel syndrome in long-term users. The Milestone's off-centre keyboard will cripple you in a matter of weeks.
The big drawback with the Nexus One is it is currently only available direct from Google. This makes it expensive – at about £425 – as there is no network operator to subsidise it and leaves any customer who has problems with the device with no other option than emailing Google and waiting for a response. That, however, is going to change later this year as Vodafone, and possibly T-Mobile, will sell the Nexus One in the UK later this year. Anyone desperate for an Android phone would do well to wait; treating this latest Motorola attempt as a Milestone on the road to something better.
Pros: It's not an iPhone – for those that cannot bear the thought of becoming "one of those people that has an iPhone".
Cons: It's not a Nexus One