Motorola Milestone XT720 – with eight MP camera
Motorola Milestone XT720 is the latest cell phone from this company and the internal specs are really impressive. The slider keyboard interface is dumped to give the phone a sleeker design and plenty of other improvements like an awesome eight megapixel camera which supports HD video recording. The feature set is really good but the performance is not as fast as some of the fastest Android devices out there. So if you yearn for plenty of power, I would recommend you to go for something like the Motorola Droid X. I got the unlocked version of this phone in my labs for reviewing, the cost of the unlocked handset is $460 and it was given to me by eXpansys USA. However, Cincinnati Bell announced a few days ago that they would be covering this phone for $199.99.
Motorola Milestone XT720 looks really sleek but it is a bit odd for smartphone. The handset is 4.53 inches tall, 0.43 inch thick, 2.39 inches wide and weighs around 5.6 ounces. The design, just like other touch screen handsets, has a slate layout. I would have preferred a streamlined design here but this layout didn’t make much difference to my experience.
The display of the Motorola Milestone XT720 is 3.7 inches big with resolution of 480×854 pixels. The display is capacitive so you will get the same user experience as the iPhone. The text is really easy to read and the images too looked sharp on the display. The screen has a built in accelerometer which automatically changes the orientation when you tilt the device. The photos’ can also be pinched for zooming in and out. The screen is also responsive and quick, you will not have any problems with it. I was also glad to see that the manufacturer dumped Motoblur for Android since the interface is much cleaner.
The keyboard of the Motorola Milestone XT720 could have been better though. There is no physical keyboard so all you get is the virtual one for punching your text messages. Things got really cramped in the portrait mode but I had plenty of errors and mispresses in the landscape mode too. I won’t recommend you this phone if you are going to type a lot of messages.
Motorola Milestone XT720 comes with an app called My Sign. For launching certain apps, you just have to draw some doodles. For instance, drawing W will turn the Wi-Fi on/off and drawing V will start the voice mail. There are a few preloaded gestures but you can also make your own. You can’t just make these gestures on the homescreen, you will have to start the app first. According to me, this doesn’t save much time because you have to open the application anyways.
There are a few buttons underneath the screen which are typical Android ones – search, back, home and menu. They are all touch sensitive so you will get haptic feedback for your touches. There are a few physical buttons on the phone like camera button, volume rocker, and media gallery launcher. On the phone’s top, there is a 3.5 mm headphones jack, power/lock button, and HDMI port. On the phone’s left, there is the microUSB port.
