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Introduction 

I’ll be the first to admit, I wanted to hate this phone. I sneered at the Motorola logo as I laughed at the longer-than-average boot time for what I thought was an inferior OS to the iPhone OS. After 4.0 was announced, I thought that no other phone OS could beat it, let alone those with strange code names like “Flan” or “Cupcake” or “Kueh Lapis” or something. I begrudgingly slipped the boxy, brick-like Motorola Milestone into my pocket and forced myself to give it a fair test, since it was the first Android OS phone I have used. How good can this thing be? I asked myself. Little did I know, this phone, rather the experience of using this phone, would blow my tiny little Apple tainted mind. 

Review continues after the jump

The Look & Feel - Ergonomics and exterior

Motorola has never been a leader in the field of aesthetics – with an exception for the renowned Razr V3 - and the Milestone is no different. I wouldn’t call the Milestone a travesty to design, but it’s rather uninspired. Sticking to a boxy design with a square chin reminiscent of the HTC Hero, I can’t help feel that it should have just been flush with the rest of the phone.

Below the beautiful 3.7” WVGA display are four touch sensitive buttons for your convenience, or in my case inconvenience. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but more than a few times I’ve accidently pressed the back button with my right thumb while sliding up the screen, exiting what I wanted the keyboard for in the first place. Again, once you are used to the phone, you learn to flick the screen up and twirl the phone into landscape with one hand, instantly gaining street cred and every girl/guy’s number in a 10 metre radius (results may vary). 

 

The slide was something I had a love hate relationship with, secretly wishing it was spring loaded like a Sidekick, but after a few weeks of using it, I realized why it’s not. While looking quite swish, a spring-loaded anything tends to be flimsy, and the mechanism is usually only good for a certain period of time before it stops springing altogether. 

Fortunately the Milestones slider mechanism feels rugged enough to withstand many repetitions of above said chick/guy magnet flick manoeuvre. The slider moves with a good resistance and gives a solid click securing it in place revealing a standard QWERTY keyboard and what looks like a mini touchpad or a fingerprint scanner of sorts, It turns out though that it was just a glorified D-Pad. I feel that the keyboard is far too cramp for my liking, often having to contort my digits to hit the right keys on the top row. Perhaps I'm not used to having a dedicated button for ? and @ but not for ! where it is on the alternate keyset. Maybe Motorola should have ditched the D-Pad and made the keyboard a little more spacious ala the N900. 

In your hand it can’t help but to feel like a tool rather than an extension to your hand. The problems I have with the design and layout of the tactile buttons is that at default grip position, your fingers will inadvertently hit either the flimsy camera button or flimsy volume button.

The grippy rear of the phone plays host to the 5 megapixel, auto-focusing camera that features a built-in dual LED flash. Due to the rubberized finish, it also stops the phone from slipping and sliding all over the place, a major plus point for a klutz like me. My only gripe was that the battery door was harder to open than I expected, it outsmarted the Lowyat.Net guys for a good 5 minutes before eventually succumbing to us.

Overall, for the world’s thinnest QWERTY slider, it’s a little on the heavy side. It’s not a bad kind of heavy, but more like, for loss of a better word, hefty.

The experience – Google Android 2.1

This is my first time playing around with the Android OS, so it took me a while to get used to everything, having been used to the Apple way of things since my first iPhone in 2007. After the initial teething problems however, it was plain sailing all the way through.

Most people getting the Milestone will have used the Android platform before, so I’ll keep my noobish gushing to a minimum. Coming from an iPhone only background, Android was a breath of fresh air. The elegance of the notification style and integration into the top menu bar far surpasses the iPhone OS’ Push system. Multitasking was incredible and not detrimental to the phone’s processor even with many apps running in the background. I enjoyed having a “BBM-esque” experience with my GTalk account, which was always online, and for some strange reason, my HSDPA connection seemed faster than usual.

The UI was fluid and intuitive, however I did feel that the screen was not as responsive and multi-touch gestures were not as polished as the iPhone. This meant the on screen keyboard was a lot harder to type on than the iPhone, not to mention the slightly less intuitive dictionary, but I guess that can be trained. I also liked the fact that widgets could be integrated into the home screen, same as with app shortcuts; with Apple’s Dashboard you’d think they’d be ahead in this part of the game wouldn’t you?

The integration with Google Maps and their built in MotoNav turn-by-turn software with the GPS receiver built into the phone is surprisingly good. I used the software numerous times and it didn’t let me down, especially when I was guiding a very lost driver back to my house. 

This brings me to my biggest gripe about the Milestone, Android OS and subsequently any phone running this platform, the apps. The Android marketplace is a very barren place, with a few very useful or interesting apps like Layar and Google Goggles, but for the most part, they are pretty much boring. The lack of apps is why many people are hesitant to switch over to the Android platform, although this is a problem that time will resolve. Things are too hidden on the Android as well, often in 1 or 2 menus. Aside from battery life problems over heavy use (I can get through a full work day before the battery dies on me on the way home), which was expected, and minor niggles I had with the OS, I can’t really find fault with what is essentially an Open-Source software in its relative infancy. I can’t help feel that the Android OS is less polished than the iPhone OS in many aspects, but it’s that raw potential Android OS exudes that is going to make me keep a close eye on the future iterations of the platform.

Conclusion

I wanted so badly for this phone to suck, so I could climb back up onto my Apple pedestal and wax lyrical about how iPhone OS 4 is going to revolutionize the world. However in my time with the Motorola Milestone has opened my eyes to the fact that Apple has quite a bit of catching up to do in certain areas, namely the notifications, multitasking and integration with the cloud. In essence, the phone itself is quite mediocre, but married with the amazing Android OS, it is a force to be reckoned with, and in fact given me serious reason to switch camps.

Back to the question: How good can this thing be? Apple fanboy considering defecting, you tell me.

The Motorola Milestone is now available in Malaysia for a RRP of RM2299. For more information about the Motorola Milestone visit: www.motorola.com/milestone.