Unboxing the Motorola Milestone

We've been dying to get our hands on the Motorola Milestone (aka Droid in the US) since the moment we heard it was announced.

Boy oh boy, this phone sure has a lot to live up to. Not only is it the most powerful Android phone on the market, but now it has the audacity to claim it is a phone without compromises? We'll just have to see about that!

There she is, popping her glossy black head over the cardboard like a handkerchief in your jacket pocket.

No great surprises in the box; a charger, a manual, CD with software, etc. Oh, and the phone of course!

The Milestone feels nice to hold. It's not too thick or heavy and it's not slippery at all. Good first impression.

Here we are at the home screen. For what it's worth, the boot time of the Milestone is considerably faster than any of HTC's Android smartphones. The lock screen is a cute touch too, the semi-circle rotates like an old rotary phone dialler.

After the fuss we heard about Motorola's fancy MotoBlur home screen system on the Moto CLIQ, it is a tad disappointing to discover a bare-bones build of Android, even if it is Android 2.0.

This actually describes our experience quite accurately. After downloading and playing with a few apps the Milestone started to get almost uncomfortably warm.

In case any of you doubted for a moment that this is what we say it is. Why y'all gotta be haters?

This keyboard will be one of the key reasons people will choose the Milestone over its many competitors. It's a big, well-spaced keyboard and easy to use.

...with an LED flash! Looking forward to testing this camera out over the next couple of weeks.

Like most Android phones released so far, the Milestone doesn't ship with a large-sized portion of internal memory, but Motorola is generous enough to include an 8GB card.