What is it?
A smartphone running Android 2.0 with a physical QWERTY keyboard
How much does it cost?
£360 inc VAT SIM-free, or free on your average 18-month contract
Why did I buy it?
The iPhone is a lovely device, and the HTC Desire is a really rather splendid handset if you prefer Android. Neither, however, has a proper keyboard - one with, you know, keys to press when you want to type a letter. The Milestone may look like something out of the Hasselhoff-era of technology design, all angular and shiny black with occasional patches of gold, but it slides open to reveal a full QWERTY keypad with dedicated buttons for key punctuation symbols (unlike, for example, some Blackberry devices).
Having a proper, usable keyboard transforms a smartphone that’s fit for reading Twitter during a commute into something so much more useful. Armed with a keyboard it’s suddently possible to type URLs and get the page you actually wanted rather than one chosen by luck-of-the-typo-draw, and to send emails without having to resist the urge to hurl the device through the nearest window as it autocorrects meaning into stupidity for the umpteenth time.
Of course having a keyboard alone isn’t good enough - if it were, I’d just use a Blackberry. Fortunately the Milestone is a very capable smartphone. The display has a stupidly high resolution that dwarfs that of the iPhone (854x480 pixels), the web browser is lovely, renders well and supports multi-touch, the GPS system is quick to lock onto satellites and the three panel Android design makes it possible to have panoramic cat photographs as your wallpaper. And yes, that is terribly important.
And there are the miscellaneous advantages to having an Android phone rather than an iPhone - the ability to multitask now rather than at some as-yet-undisclosed point in the future, a choice of apps not filtered by the Whim Of Jobs principle, free contact synchronisation with Google’s online services, and so on. An over-the-air update to Android 2.1, including Flash support, is scheduled for this month.
It’s not, of course, flawless. Ugliness aside, the lip at the bottom of the phone is awkward, and the camera is as average as those in most smartphones. That said, if you’re the type of phone user who likes to, well, type, it’s the one to buy. And so, when the review sample left with a courier, I bought.
Where can you get it?
Although not sold directly by the major UK networks, the Milestone is listed SIM-free or on a selection of contracts at Expansys.com. The US version is known as the Motorola Droid - but there are a few differences in specification, as outlined here, that are worth looking out for.
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