random thoughts thinking aloud

Motorola Milestone: Hands-on Part 1

I purchased Motorola Milestone yesterday, which is the official English version (in the sense that there is no traditional / simplified Chinese locale, but you can read Chinese and input Chinese using the "Moto input").

I have been a T-mobile G1 owner and user for over 8 months. I flashed my G1 with CyanogenMod (he is the best!), and considered myself as an "have-more-experience-than-a-newbie" user.

This is part 1 of my review of Milestone (Hong Kong verison). I charged up the battery over-night, and haven't got much time to test every feature of the phone. So in this part 1 I will share some of my initial thoughts of Milestone.

You may find the detailed specification from the European official website (the Hong Kong Motorola website hasn't posted up anything about Milestone yet) the Hong Kong official website, but here are some data / features which might not be disclosed there :-

• The phone is running firmware version 2.0 (there are reports that the camera has bugs, and the US equivalent Droid has already got patch version 2.0.1)
• The available phone memory is 140MB (I only installed SMS Backup and updated Google Maps at that point)
• Selectable locales/language are : English (UK and US), Spanish, French, Italian and German
• It has ambient light sensor
• It has settings regarding Credential storage on the SD card (I need to further explore that, it seems to be an Android 2.0 feature rather than Motorola's)
• It can sync with more than one google account. I have a GAFYD account and several generic gmail/google accounts. This may be of great help to me because some of the google services (e.g. google search history, google bookmarks) are not available to GAFYD accounts.
• Further to the above, you may add more than one account to the Gmail application. As I consolidate all my e-mail accounts to my GAFYD account, I am not going to test this feature.

Included Software :-

• There are 2 applications called "Corporate Calendar" and "Corporate Directory" which seem to sync with Microsoft Exchange server. I don't use these and will not test them.
• The Motonav application does not work, as there is no data included. A written notice is included in the box informed you the same.
• The included Google Maps is not the most updated one. You may update it in Market. The navigation feature is not enabled (unlike the US Droid). I may try the hack to see if it works with the Hong Kong Milestone.
• My Sign is a Motorola application allowing user to set touchscreen gesture to open applications. The gestures reminds of the "graffiti" in PalmOS (the good old days ...). I don't find it very handy, as you have to open the My Sign app and then draw the gesture.
• Phone Portal is another Motorola application. When you connect your phone via WIFI, it allows PCs of the same WIFI network to connect to the phone. I will test this later.
• Of course, there is Moto Input, which allows input of traditional/simplified Chinese by handwriting and pinyin. I haven't tried it enough to pass judgment.

Battery life

As I said before, I only put the phone on light use (a few SMS, downloaded 2 apps in Market, played with various features) this morning. I switched it on at 8:00 a.m. and the Settings show the battery still has 70% after 4 hours 25 minutes. Remember, this is only after the first charge, the battery usually runs for longer lifespan after a few discharge-recharge cycles.

I am going to resume my review later. If you want me to test any features, please leave a comment.