Motorola Milestone (Droid, if you're in the US)

In the beginning there was HTC, and lo, they created a phone and named it G1. And it did sell.

Now Motorola have created a sibling to the G1, the Motorola Milestone (Droid if you’re stateside) and not only is it more slimline than it’s G1 brethren, it also comes with Android 2.0!

First thing I noticed about the Milestone is the phone and slider feel rock solid. The arc slider on the G1 was spring loaded and felt like it would loosen after a while (which it never did) but the Milestone slider needs a good shove all the way to click in place, this I like.

On putting my 3 SIM in and powering up the Milestone I was greeted with the ‘android’ loading screen then the familiar Android desktop. Now it’s time to log in with my Gmail info. I’m interested to see if everything will still sync OK. Technically it should, of course, but I’m old sk00l and am used to having to manually enter all your contacts on getting a new phone/SIM. But, once signed in, the phone connected to Google and all my Gmail contacts are there, same with my Google calendar stuff. Fantastic!

One thing that took a bit of getting used to was having no buttons on the front of the phone. There are four icons below the screen. They are actually touch sensitive buttons which come in to play when the screen is active, I kept poking at them while the screen was off, expecting the screen to spring to life like I was used to with my G1, on the Milestone you use the on/off button at the top of the unit to activate/sleep the screen.

Having tinkered with several home screen replacements on the G1 (GDE being one of my favourites) I’ve grown to love SlideScreen so, after signing in, I headed to the Market to install SlideScreen, but would the Market still allow it? After all, I paid for SlideScreen from my G1. But, of course, everything is saved at Google’s end, so it does indeed mark it as paid and installs in a jiffy. The Market also remembers several other apps that I recently (un)installed under the Downloads tab, so that’s quick links to apps that I need.

SlideScreen - the home replacement app.

One thing I did notice more on the Milestone is that up top where it normally shows the 3G logo, I was seeing an ‘H’. Odd. Turns out this is some super-fast 3G connection which I never got on the G1. Another bonus!

My next port of call was to install K9 for my non-Gmail, but I noticed an icon for Gmail and Email in the system settings. Prodding email lets me set up a non-Gmail account without the need for another app. Cool! There are also icons for Corporate Calendars and what-not, allowing you to sync with Microsoft Exchange. Which is no doubt very welcome for business users.

I installed several of my other apps (Camera ZOOM FX, Droid Analytics and Doodledroid to name but a few) and they certainly seem faster on the Milestone, especially Doodledroid. Normally in Doodledroid on the G1 it would take a second/two to update the screen if you were using the smudge tool, on the Milestone it’s virtually instantaneous. I installed Camera ZOOM FX as I could never seem to get a decent picture with the standard camera app, Camera ZOOM FX uses the sensors within the phone to detect stability before taking a photo. And the resulting photo’s are good, it’s now a 5mp camera.

I also kept wondering why the screen was fading in and out. Turns out the Milestone has a sensor at the top left to detect the light level where you are and adjusts the brightness of the screen accordingly, so when I pick up my phone in the dead of night and turn it on, I will no longer blind myself. Nice!

MixZing - for all your MP3 needs

Since my iPod is on it’s last legs, see my previous post about changing its battery, I installed MixZing and copied across several MP3 files. MixZing did a great job of playing the files and sending info to LastFM. It’s minimal display shows just the album cover with play/pause, love/hate and so on but also uses your played songs to offer suggestions for new stuff! The good thing with the Milestone, compared to the G1, is the standard ear/headphone jack at the top of the unit, so this now becomes a phone/camera/mp3 player.

Next, Twidroid. I install it because it works well with SlideScreen and Twidroid will also let me try out the keyboard. Like I said, the keyboard is revealed with a resounding click. Typing is easy enough although it would probably have been better if each key was raised slightly, on the Milestone all the keys are little flat squares, unlike the G1 where each key has a gap between it and a bevel to each button. Although why they bothered with the black rectangle to the right of the keys is anyone’s guess, it’s basically a D-pad like you’d get on a SNES controller. Only downside with the keyboard is that you need to press ALT to get numbers, I reckon Motorola should have let the screen slide up another 10mm and gave the number keys their own row at the top of the keyboard.

Google have also incorporated a lot of voice activated stuff in Android 2.0. Having just joined Buzz (the Google/Twitter mashup) I poked the microphone icon beside the Google search widget and, quite clearly, said: ‘post buzz’, which should have taken me to a Gmail/Buzz page. Instead, Google searched for ‘horse barns’. Not quite sure how Google worked that out, but I’m sure my Glaswegian accent wasn’t taken in to account when Google did voice trials. Shame that. But after several tries, it got it. So it might be an idea to incorporate some sort of ‘voice training’ thing in Android so that the OS can get used to accents.

The Motorola Milestone doesn’t come cheap. Mine cost me ~£340 on eBay which is pretty cheap, but it’s definitely a great phone, I can see now why everyone was going droid-crazy over the pond. It has more internal power and storage than the G1 so it doesn’t feel like a new phone, it feels like a step up, the next-gen if you like. It’s expensive, but I love it, it’s definitely my new all-in-one phone/camera/mp3 player gadget.  Similar Posts:

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Yay! Business cards, postcards, stickers, stamper and free business card holder. Snazzy!

I’ve used VistaPrint before for business cards (I have ones just saying that I’m an ‘artist’ on them) but this time I decided to just spend a little bit extra and put some decent images on there. I think they look pretty good, don’t you? Top left is the (open) business card holder with business cards in there, the card holder was free. Top right is the stamper with my name, and URL, in it. Middle right is one of the ‘address’ labels, but I’ve put my name, email and URL on it. And bottom is the postcard with four images on the front and one on the back (not shown). All in all it cost about £45 (incl P&P, by courier) for:

• 250 business cards
• 140 stickers
• 1 stamper
• 100 postcards, and:
• a business card holder.

This blog will still have some art related stuff in it, but it’ll be more tech related (which is where it gets most of it’s hits from) and the pet/wildlife portrait stuff will be in the root of the URL (http://ronnietucker.co.uk) which also has a link to here via a ‘Tech Blog’ link.Similar Posts:

• New Blog, New Look
• ASUS EEE – FINALLY!
• Commissions
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• Todays Science Experiment: Disassembling an iPod battery (or: How To Burn Your House Down)