Motorola’s Milestone handset failed to ignite the same passion in the UK as its twin, the Droid, did in the United States. It is unclear why, but it could be because of the combination of the device’s slow performance, chunky keyboard, rubbish camera and questionably-useful MotoBlur UI will have put at least some people off.
So enter the Motorola Milestone XT720, which for all intents and purposes is the Milestone 2. The company seems to have learnt a lot from the first device. The processor has been bumped up to 720MHz, the keyboard has gone entirely, the camera is now 8-megapixel and Motoblur has been granted a few updates in functionality.
There’s a redesign of the device itself, which now resembles a digital camera more than a traditional phone handset. There’s a raised section featuring a shutter button and media key on the lower right-hand side, but unfortunately it’s all too easy to hit by accident with your palm when you’re entering text one-handed.
In fact, the whole device isn’t that pretty. It has a very masculine design, with a dark silver bezel around the display that’s a fingerprint magnet. The regular menu, back, home and search buttons are positioned below the screen, as with most Android handsets, albeit in a different order to what you might be used to. On the side there’s a volume rocker, the charging port and the volume button sits on the top next to the 3.5mm headphone jack.
Also on the top is a covered miniHDMI port, which lets the gadget output video in 720p resolution at 60Hz. The battery cover hides the SIM card and microSD card slots. Also on the back is the 8-megapixel camera, which delivered respectable, if a little noisy, images and featured a pleasantly short focal distance in macro mode. It’s a better camera than most phones have, and an adequate replacement for a cheap compact, but it’s not going to replace a high-end compact or a DSLR.
Performance of the handset is adequate. It’s running Android 2.1, so if (and that’s a big if; Motorola refused to comment) it gets an update to 2.2 then that’ll improve considerably. Unfortunately it doesn’t have the oomph of the chip in the Nexus One, but Motorola’s done a respectable job of optimising the handset so that you don’t notice too much difference. However, we’ve only seen a new handset — we haven’t been able to factor in the bloat that inevitably arises over time.
Motorola’s included some custom software. There’s a gallery app that isn’t as pretty as the default Android one. There’s a car home application that isn’t as pretty as the default Android one. There’s also a navigation service that Motorola provides that costs money, unlike the default Android one. The presence of all these apps is a mystery, though Motorola did explain to me when I asked that they want to offer a choice to the user, and that their navigation option doesn’t require a data connection to use.
More usefully, There’s a “Corporate calendar” and “Corporate directory” that allow access to Exchange servers, and a few EQ choices for both headphones and the onboard speaker. There’s also a promising-looking video editor, but hilariously it doesn’t work with videos shot using the device, throwing up an “unsupported resolution” error. A “Phone portal” app allows handy Wi-Fi sync with your PC, and there’s a fun custom gesture creation app too, but it’s not clear what time savings that offers compared to just clicking a shortcut on the homescreen.
Motorola claims 4.5hrs of 3G talktime or 320hrs of battery standby.
As you might be able to tell, the XT720 failed to really raise too much excitement in me. The form factor isn’t terribly exciting, and is kinda ugly (the Flipout has more interesting, innovative ideas). In essence, rather than a competitor to the current Android top dog, the Nexus One, the Motorola XT720 seems to just be an attempt to offer a higher-specced Milestone.
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