Motorola MILESTONE camera , video recording, connectivity, web browser, Organizer, GPS navigation
On the hardware side of things Motorola MILESTONE has a 5 megapixel camera module for a maximum image resolution of 2592 x 1936 pixels and dual-LED flash. The Open Handset Alliance finally decided to do something about the camera features in Android 2.0 – i.e. they actually included a few.
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The new stuff includes built-in flash support (apparently the Samsung Galaxy made use of some home-brewed drivers to get around that limitation), digital zoom, scene mode, white balance, color effects and macro focus mode.
No, it doesn’t seem much: other companies have had those in their cameraphones for ages but for the Android community this is a huge step forward. Rome wasn’t built in a day after all.
The user interface is pretty decent, although not exactly perfect. You have all the options on a retractable tray at the left side of the viewfinder which can either be dragged out by a finger sweep or by pressing the menu key. With so few options at hand we don’t see why most of them aren’t available as onscreen shortcuts to begin with.
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The MILESTONE camera user interface
Instead the only things that are accessible all the time on screen is a switch for alternating the camcorder and the still camera, a virtual shutter key and a shortcut to the gallery docked in the bottom right.
Anyways, when it comes to the actual product of the Motorola MILESTONE camera – the photos – we’re quite pleased with the image quality. There’s plenty of resolved detail, the colors are also nicely saturated and the images are quite punchy.
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At the same time though, there is quite a lot of noise and some oversharpening artifacts. Even though there’s some aggressive noise reduction smearing fine detail away there are still patches where the chromatic noise is excessive. The jagged edges in some cases also indicate that Motorola still have some work to do before they catch up with the best in the business.
And here go the samples for you to check out.
Motorola MILESTONE camera samples
D1 video recording comes to Android
Video recording on the MILESTONE is as good as we have ever seen on an Android handset. D1 resolution (720 x 480 pixels) at 30 fps is where its capabilities end and we doubt its users will need much more.
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The interface of the camcorder is similar to the one on the still camera, except that there are even fewer settings. You can set the video quality, the maximum duration of the clip, adjust white balance, apply color effects and that’s that.
Camcorder interface
Videos are recorded in 3gp format which suggests lower bitrate, which in turn leads to some compression artifacts. On the other hand, colors are really pleasing and the videos look very nice.
Here is a sample video for you to see.
Flawless connectivity
Connectivity is certainly another area where the Motorola MILESTONE excels. For starters you get quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE for worldwide roaming and dual-band (900/2100 MHz) 3G with HSPA. The HSDPA is quoted at 10.2 Mbps and the HSUPA can reach up to 5.76 Mbps.
We than move on to local connectivity – the MILESTONE offers USB v2.0, Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP support and Wi-Fi. The USB interface is standard microUSB, which makes finding a suitable cable a lot easier. And now that they have enabled Bluetooth transfers, there is very little more to be asked for.
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The one thing that would ask for is tethering, as we simply could not get our MILESTONE to do it.
Back on the positive track we have to mention that the built-in microSD card slot can also be used as a data transfer tool. Card-readers are going for peanuts these days so having one around is quite likely and they give some pretty impressive speeds.
With such an ample high-res screen and a full QWERTY keyboard, the Motorola MILESTONE looks like the logical choice for people who take handheld browsing seriously. The Multi-touch support allows the pinch zoom, while the great Android Webkit-based browser provides one of the coolest interfaces in the business.
Android 2.0 also introduces the double tap zooming gesture, whereby double-clicking on a selected part of a web page quickly zooms in on it to fill the screen. Regardless whether you use this option or the pinching gesture zooming, it is smooth and fluid and the same goes for panning and scrolling around the webpage.
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Browsing GSMArena.com on the MILESTONE
Unfortunately, the Motorola MILESTONE doesn’t support text reflow while zooming to maximize its usability but given how wonderful the high-res screen, we are almost willing to let that one go unpunished.
Another new feature is the address bar, which is now constantly available so typing a new address is easier than ever. With the high resolution there is still plenty of space available for the website contents to be displayed.
The final new feature brought by the new OS version is bookmark enhancement with page thumbnails.
The browser allows you to have multiple web pages open at the same time. If you hit the Windows button in the browser menu, you will see all the currently opened pages and you can choose which one of them to view. Switching from one page to another involves smooth transition effects.
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Multiple web pages are supported too
Strangely enough we didn’t see the magnifier functionality that was present in the other recent Android handsets that we reviewed. It’s certainly not missed too much given there is another zooming gesture to replace it but we just don’t see why they had to remove it.
The excellent multi-page support is of course still available and the rendering algorithm is basically flawless. As you may suspect, the Android browser is fast and the interface clean. But unlike so many of its smartphone siblings, Flash support is not available.
The missing Flash support is partially compensated for with the YouTube app
There is of course a YouTube application onboard but Flash content doesn’t start nor end with YouTube.
Yet things might improve in the future as the browser supports HTML5 and its <video> tag that allows videos to be streamed even without flash. This is again only a partial solution as there are too few sites using it at the moment (after all even most desktop browsers don’t support it yet) and, of course, it only works for video.
Organizer does the job with some help from the Android Market
Just like most of its Android siblings, the Motorola MILESTONE comes with a nicely stocked organizer, though it does lack a preinstalled document viewer. Luckily you can fix that instantly by getting the one of the free apps from the Android market.
For example the free version of Quickoffice supports viewing documuent files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF). Unfortunately you will have to get the paid app for editing.
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The free Quickoffice enables you to view document files from you Motorola MILESTONE
The best part about it is that the viewer integrates with the Gmail app as well, which makes viewing attachments easy. Unfortunately, you are unable to save them in the phone’s memory (that only works for images, we guess). Attaching saved files (and we mean all kind of files) is possible though.
The calendar has four different types of view – agenda, daily, weekly and monthly. Adding a new event is quick and easy, and you can also set an alarm to act as a reminder.
The organizer centerpiece – the calendar
With the MILESTONE the agenda view allows infinite scrolling in case that is how you like to browse your events. The events notifications have also been updated and now show the attending status for each invitee.
There is also a calculator aboard. It is nicely touch optimized – the buttons are big enough and very comfy.
The MILESTONE features a decent alarm clock application which allows a huge number of alarms to be set, each with its own start time and repeat pattern.
Finally comes the YouTube app, which as we said, partially compensates for the web browser’s lack of Flash video support. Its interface is simple enough to allow you to find what you’re looking for as quickly as possible.
GPS navigation
The Motorola MILESTONE comes with a capable GPS receiver, which coupled with A-GPS technology, gets a sattelite lock decently fast.
It comes as no surprise that the Google Maps applications comes preinstalled, but this time you also get Motorola’s proprietary MOTONAV software. Unfortunately it doesn’t sport any free license and you have to pay extra for voice-guided navigation.
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Google Maps
Motorola MOTONAV
Quite naturally, the app also sports Street View mode. In fact, this mode is probably the best part of the Google Maps. If the Street View is available in the area you’re interested in, you can enjoy a 360-degree view of the area. When the digital compass is turned on it feels like making a virtual tour of the surroundings!
The digital compass benefits the Street View greatly
Unfortunately, voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation isn’t possible using Google Maps like on the MILESTONE American cousin – Motorola DROID. Still, there is some kind of navigation: your route and current location appear on the screen so you’ll reach your destination eventually… assuming you can read maps of course.
So to put it simply if you want to use proper navigation on your MILESTONE you will have to either purchase a MOTONAV license or download a third party app from the Android Market. In any case you should be prepared to pay at least 50 euro a year.
