Motorola MILESTONE 2 Review

Introduction:

The Motorola MILESTONE 2, the European release of the Motorola DROID 2 is an update of the original MILESTONE with a fresh spec sheet as well as a few other tweaks. Often credited with bringing Motorola out of the dark ages, the original MILESTONE was generally considered a success, but has Motorola rested on its laurels with the MILESTONE 2, or is this a welcome update with some fresh appeal?

Design:

Sporting Motorola's grade A build quality, the Motorola MILESTONE 2 feels similar to its predecessor and solid to the touch, with a wonderfully secure sliding mechanism that inspires confidence with every glide up and down. It adopts Motorola's classic bevelled bottom styling as found on the Motorola MILESTONE XT720 and the original MILESTONE, with the same metal back cover.



You can compare the Motorola MILESTONE 2 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The Motorola MILESTONE 2's capacitive touch screen measures in at 3.7 inches with a resolution of 480x854 pixels. As expected, it's crisp, with a great level of detail, though is slightly dull when compared with both S-AMOLED and S-LCD displays such as that found on the HTC Desire Z (T-Mobile G2). Nevertheless, viewing angles are on the whole good. The screen is also responsive on the whole.


 
Build quality is for the most part good and there’s a great sliding mechanism on board, inspiring confidence in the phone’s moving parts. While there’s no spring, it’s nevertheless solid and well constructed. The physical QWERTY keyboard is too flat, with keys having little differentiating them. The £ key on the review handset we have also pulls up a $ symbol. Nevertheless, despite these issues, the QWERTY is a usable feature on the MILESTONE 2.

Interface and Functionality:

When it comes to the interface, rather than sticking with a stock Android experience, we're forced to deal with MOTOBLUR, which on the plus means better Facebook / Twitter integration as well as a universal inbox, but also means a hardwired, cumbersome social client that you're stuck with. There are 7 home screens that you can move between with a slide left or right and the core experience all works well, it’s just a shame MOTOBLUR is so obtrusive.
 


The camera is a 5-megapixel unit with autofocus - the same as the original MILESTONE with the same strengths and limitations. When taking photos where lighting is good, there is a fair amount of detail with accurate looking colors, though a touch dark. Additionally, the handset handles macro shots well for the most part. In situations where lighting is scarce, there is a fair bit of noise and graininess in our shots, though the dual LED flash on the handset does a decent job of illuminating our shots, albeit making colours look washed out. Overall though, not bad at all.




An area the Motorola MILESTONE 2 benefits over its US counterpart, the DROID 2, is video capture. As you will see from the sample, 720p video looks pretty nice in HD, with generally smooth capture, though is slightly dull and not the best for noise.

Motorola MILESTONE 2 Sample Video:

The stock Android music player does provide basically everything you need, by listing your music by artists, albums, songs, and playlists though looks plain. If you happen to press on the album cover, it will change to a neat looking visualization to provide a hint of visual eye candy as a song is being played. In addition, there are also a handful of equalizer settings which will fine tune the quality of the audio from the speaker. As a whole, sound emitted by the rear speakerphone is good. When we set the equalizer to extreme bass, it managed to produce strong tones that easily resonated through the air – making for one pleasant experience.



We like the Gallery app. All of your videos and photos are arranged in specific folders at first, but you'll then be greeted to some 3D effects when scrolling between specific content.Video playback on the MILESTONE 2 is great with MP4 support smooth up to 720p.

Internet and Connectivity:

The Motorola MILESTONE 2 is a quad band GSM dual band 3G handset, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS as well as Wi-Fi.

As with other handsets, when web browsing, double tapping will enable you to zoom into specific areas while multi-touch gestures like pinching can further specify the zoom level. Scrolling is swift and thanks to Flash support, content replicates the desktop experience.

Performance:

Powered by a 1GHz TI OMAP processor with 512MB of RAM, the Motorola MILESTONE 2 runs Android 2.2, providing a smooth experience and support for Flash Player 10.1.

Call quality on the Motorola MILESTONE 2 is good on both ends and the phone was able to retain a solid connection to the network.

Battery life should be adequate for a good 8 hour work shift without requiring a charge. However, it'd be a wise decision to plug this up to a charger before going to bed at night if you want to make sure you'll have a healthy battery level in the morning. The unit is rated for a stable 9.5 hours of talk time and 13 days of standby on a single charge. A feature that influences this hugely is how activated MOTOBLUR is, with all the syncing sucking power faster than you can say “QWERTY keyboard”.

Conclusion:

To wrap up, we’re very fond of the Motorola MILESTONE 2. It's a good solid phone, but unfortunately not a great one. With the negatives mainly being MOTOBLUR's hard-wired integration and the keyboard being a touch flat for our taste. The screen is also not up to the standard found on the HTC Desire Z for example. The only tangible benefit of getting the Motorola MILESTONE 2 over HTC's alternative therefore, would be if you had a preference for the sliding mechanism over the hinge. Naturally, the main alternative to the MILESTONE 2 would be the HTC Desire Z (T-Mobile G2), however, if you wanted something all together more portrait, you could consider the BlackBerry Torch. 

Motorola MILESTONE 2 Video Review: