Moto Milestone Packs Android 2.1, Does HD Video
Motorola yesterday officially announced the Milestone XT720, the latest Android handset to come out of the company.
The Motorola Milestone is bound to interest those of you shopping around for an Android phone with a kick-ass camera. That said. the 550MHz ARM Cortex A8 CPU isn't quite as powerful as the 1GHz Spapdragons that are slowly becoming the norm among Android devices. The Milestone's 3.7 inch, WVGA (480X854) display; 8-megapixel camera (720p video at 24fps, 10x digital zoom) with Xenon flash; nine hours of talk time / 320 hours of standby; HDMI; 8GB microSD storage (expandable up to 32GB) and Android 2.1 ensure the phone isn't lacking in the features department buy it's not quite the Milestone successor we thought Motorola would bring to the table.
It's thinner than the original Milestone (known as the DROID in the US), does away the keyboard (which a lot of people don't like anyway) and packs a superior quality camera but it's just a little bit less powerful than the DROID's 600MHz A8.
It looks like the XT720 is only going to be available in Europe. Motorola is keeping quiet for now but it sounds like they're using the Europeans as guinea pigs and after gauging their reaction, will think about a U.S. release. Overall we won't be that disappointed if it doesn't make it over here as it's not exactly mind-blowing.
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The processor's probably the same as in the normal Milestone/Droid... which runs at a stock speed of 550MHz, and is specced to run at 600MHz. The chip overclocks to as high as 1.3GHz for a lot of people... and I'm running mine at 800MHz with a low voltage kernel. MMV, but at that speed I have almost no heat increase, and only a tiny tiny bit of extra battery draw, since the Droid runs at low clockspeed while idle. At 800MHz the Milestone's cortex A8 processor is roughly as fast as a 1GHz Snapdragon. (I benchmark a tiny bit faster than a stock speed Nexus One).
No keyboard BLOWS though. The Keyboard is VERY useful on the milestone. The camera spec increase, and HDMI are nice. I wish my device had them, but that's pretty standard fair for new Android phones. I hope they increased the RAM, since that's something that the Milestone definitely needs...
Overall, this is a big "meh". Moto didn't release this fast enough. Most people don't root their phones, so they need to use a high clocked processor if they want to be competitive with devices like the HTC Incredible, and Nexus One.
I doubt that this device makes it to the states. We'll just get the "Shadow" or whatever, which is similar to this, only with a slightly faster Cortex A8.
Weird that they'd call it different names different places. Only in that here in America, theoretically 'DROID' is a whole line of phones, though they did have the 'kick-off' phone. Commercials call the HTC Incredible a Droid as well.
Weird that they'd call it different names different places. Only in that here in America, theoretically 'DROID' is a whole line of phones, though they did have the 'kick-off' phone. Commercials call the HTC Incredible a Droid as well.
"Droid" is a Verizon naming convention. Verizon gives all of their top of the line Android phones a Droid name and pays LucasArts to use the name Droid. That is why it has a different name in US than in Europe.
but why does it say in the motodev site that the processor is running at 720?
http://developer.motorola.com/products/milestonext720/ here's the link for proof. now i'm really confused :S and yes it shows also that both ROM and RAM are both 512.. can anyone confirm? because i really want this phone, well the phone on the site i linked anyway.
Strange that Motorola would continue to use such an inferior processor in their Android phones. The speed reduction that occurred on the Motorola Droid with the Android 2.1 upgrade is due to the poor processing power of the ARM Cortex A8, not the Android 2.1 operating system. The Snapdragon processor (when used at stock speeds) can run Android 2.1 as fast as it can Android 2.0.
Any reason why it is not using 2.2 like they did on the Iphone 3g ?
Should be easy enough to switch from 2.1 to current 2.2 .
Iphone 3g running Android 2.2 .
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/201 [...] es+2%29%29
does away the keyboard (which a lot of people don't like anyway)
WTF? the hardware keyboard is in my opinion the only reason to choose the milestone over any other android phone tbh.
I have a moto droid and I NEVER use the hardware keyboard. it is wasted bulk and weight for me.
hehehe. Spapdragons...
Seriously though, this phones seems to fall kinda short with all the other amazing android based devices either already out, or coming soon