Motorola Milestone review

Motorola’s Milestone (also known as the Droid in the US) is the latest Android-based pretender to the iPhone crown, and judging by the reports of record sales figures, many people seem to think that it’s already won the war. With a better specification than the iPhone – a camera with a 5-megapixel sensor and dual-LED flash, a 3.7in 480×854-pixel screen and multi-tasking – there are many reasons to consider the Milestone over Apple’s smartphone.

We’re already big fans of Android’s open source philosophy, and the Android Marketplace is growing at a remarkable pace, with over 20,000 apps now available. That figure may be dwarfed by the Apple App Store’s 100,000 and counting, but with fewer restrictions placed on Android developers, there’s more freedom to write applications that people want, not just those that Apple feels appropriate. On the flip side, there’s less consistency in the quality of Android apps.

The Milestone marks the debut of Android 2.0, also known as Eclair. Version 2.0 brings many improvements over the previous version, 1.6, but these are mostly cosmetic improvements to the user interface and small tweaks under the hood. The browser now supports HTML 5, with support for the new video tag, but support for Adobe Flash 10.1 hasn’t yet made it into the Milestone, so you can’t access Flash games or videos.