Motorola Milestone, Review #1

Here are my initial thoughts on Motorola Milestone.

• I think it is a pretty good phone, I had been using ADP1 form last one and half year and the mechanical quality of the phone is pretty evident as soon as you touch it.
• The slider is pretty crisp
• GMail application now supports multiple GMail account which is a great feature addition to the phone since I (and many others whom I know) have a .gmail.com account and another account for their hosted domain. Earlier I had to access one of these accounts via IMAP which definitely is not as efficient as GMail since many of the gmail features like Label and Archiving are not available from IMAP.
• The new maps is also pretty good, addition of layers and landmarks is better over the earlier version. The one thing is missing is voice navigation which supposedly is available on US droid but it missing in this one.
• Keyboard take little time to getting used to but one gets used to it. The only problem is that for entering numbers one has to press Alt.
• Soft keyboard is much better, for me the success rate is much higher compared to ADP1.
• Browser has pinch and zoom but the maps does not. I am hoping that a future release of maps through the market may carry pinch and zoom.
• There are many posts on internet that this phone does not allow protected applications download but I could download Calorie Counter from fatsecret.com which I know for sure is a protected application because I could never download it on my ADP1.
• One of the downside of getting it shipped from UK was that the phone was missing the microSD card which should have been inside the phone and it did not have it. I am trying to follow up with vendor but I have very little hope that I will get it. Anyway I can pick one up here.
• Gallery is much improved, pinch and zoom works on photos, even the gallery display is much improved with a good way to browse photos.
• Facebook for Android application is still not available for Android 2.0, one can download Bloo which works ok and the web based facebook is also decent.
• Twidroid and Seesmic clients work great for twitter.
• Camera is not great but does decent job.
  

Overall a great device. Solved many of my problems, Facebook, Twitter, GMail and all other google services.