The Official Motorola Milestone Thread

[daavidb]

Does anyone know if there is somewhere in Zürich where you can actually try the Milestone/Droid? It seems amazing but I wouldn't want to shell out that kind of cash before I've tried the keyboard, menus, etc.

[Chuff]

	Quote:	daavidb
	Does anyone know if there is somewhere in Zürich where you can actually try the Milestone/Droid? It seems amazing but I wouldn't want to shell out that kind of cash before I've tried the keyboard, menus, etc.

digitec...

[daavidb]

	Quote:	Chuff
	digitec...

So they have it on display there? And it's actually turned on and you can try the menus?

[Castro]

	Quote:	Chuff
	Speaking of The Nexus, quotes from ENgadgets review: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/04/nexus-one-review/ No, just... no. I made the right decision.

I don't know what people expect, its just another 3rd party, committee designed HTC device. By partnering with HTC, Google have taken a shortcut and it shows in this early version of the Nexus (an AMOLED screen that can't be read in sunlight???). Google should have taken a leaf out of Amazon's book. Amazon had zero manufacturing experience, which is why they spent three years designing every aspect of the Kindle from the ground up. I'm sure they could have emailed a spec sheet to a Chinese OEM manufacturer and had something back in a matter of months, but they put the user experience first and the result has been a number one best seller.

[DavidButler]

Any of you opt for the HD2 ?? How does that compare in your opinion??

[Chuff]

	Quote:	daavidb
	So they have it on display there? And it's actually turned on and you can try the menus?

No, they just have a picture on the wall to stare at.










(yes of course, a working model to play with)

[BeastOfBodmin]

	Quote:	daavidb
	So they have it on display there? And it's actually turned on and you can try the menus?

	Quote:	Chuff
	No, they just have a picture on the wall to stare at. (yes of course, a working model to play with)

It wasn't such a stupid question. I remember getting my hands on the original Nokia Communicator 10 years ago. There was a colour sticker on the screen to "simulate" what it looked like. I asked if it was possible to actually try one out and was told "no". That for a handset that cost £1000 (with no contract).

[Chuff]

	Quote:	BeastOfBodmin
	It wasn't such a stupid question. I remember getting my hands on the original Nokia Communicator 10 years ago. There was a colour sticker on the screen to "simulate" what it looked like. I asked if it was possible to actually try one out and was told "no". That for a handset that cost £1000 (with no contract).

I know I was only being light-hearted, but I wouldn't tell him to go somewhere to play with a plastic toy. I bought mine from digitec and played beforehand.

--------------------------------------

And wow I simply cannot believe how good this phone is for browsing on! If you set text size to large and then zoom out you get awesome full page browsing with very legible text... and it really is CRYSTAL clear and pin sharp. Simply mind-blowing, and looked 10x better than my friends iPhone when we put them side by side at work. DOn't even ask about my other friends N97... .

[dawiz]

	Quote:	BeastOfBodmin
	It wasn't such a stupid question. I remember getting my hands on the original Nokia Communicator 10 years ago. There was a colour sticker on the screen to "simulate" what it looked like. I asked if it was possible to actually try one out and was told "no". That for a handset that cost £1000 (with no contract).

Sadly, in many electronics shops (like Mobilezone), they only have mock-ups on display and they flat-out refuse to open a working model for you. However, Mediamarkt and Digitec have working phones to try out.


EDIT: Mediamarkt is not selling the Milestone

[Chuff]

People are making fun of the look of my phone. Bullies.

[fduvall]

Go ahead and kick us N97 owners...

fduvall

	Quote:	Chuff
	I know I was only being light-hearted, but I wouldn't tell him to go somewhere to play with a plastic toy. I bought mine from digitec and played beforehand. -------------------------------------- And wow I simply cannot believe how good this phone is for browsing on! If you set text size to large and then zoom out you get awesome full page browsing with very legible text... and it really is CRYSTAL clear and pin sharp. Simply mind-blowing, and looked 10x better than my friends iPhone when we put them side by side at work. DOn't even ask about my other friends N97... .

[CorsebouTheReturn]

Like it has been said before, the Motorola Milestone won't be available officially with Swisscom.
It's not in the Swisscom pro offers neither...

[Slaphead]

	Quote:	Chuff
	People are making fun of the look of my phone. Bullies.

Well you did show it to a bunch of iPhone users last night. What did you expect?

[dawiz]

	Quote:	DavidButler
	Any of you opt for the HD2 ?? How does that compare in your opinion??

In my opinion: not well. I sent back our HD2 eval models yesterday. Overall, it's an impressive device in terms of the hardware they used, but it's clearly not for everyone. I found the phone to be buggy. It locked me out several times, requiring a battery-pull, the Mediaplayer is prone to crashes if you don't sanitize your whole MP3 collection before you transfer it to the device - it'll crash when there are corrupted files or ID3 tags it doesn't like.

The performance is very good. It's snappy and fast and the browser is great on 3G or WiFi - it becomes unusably slow when you're on EDGE though - no idea why. The browser also takes several seconds to boot up.

Theoretically, the HD2 could run a ton of background apps without slowing down. In true life, however, the battery is the limiting factor here. While the Milestone will run Google Talk in the background all day without any significant impact on the battery life (or the performance, for that matter), running a single app that pulls data off the internet in the background will effectively kill the HD2's battery within hours (and I'm not exaggerating here - when I left IM+ or Jivetalk running in the background, the battery was dead in less than 4 hours, even when I didn't use the phone at all). The battery also drains quickly in airplane mode - I lost about 20% per night.

And then there's the app-factor. I'm not going to start another basic discussion on this - but to make it short: if you want the convenience of being able to install, upgrade etc. apps easily from within the intended market / app-store, steer clear of Windows Mobile. Microsoft's marketplace sucks. Period. There are about 70 apps in the Swiss store, about half of which are demo versions. Paid apps are not available at this point. Yes, there are thousands of (mostly old and, on a large finger-operated touchscreen, very ugly looking museum-type-apps) for Windows Mobile. And yes, there's a handful of new and stylish apps, too, but nowhere near Android's almost 20'000 polished applications that are available from the Android Market.

There were only two things I liked about the HD2: the screen (I genuinely liked that, it's gorgeous if only because it's so big - it's neither brighter nor more sensitive than the Milestone's) and the eye-candy Sense UI which I grew tired of within 2 days. Apart from that: I just couldn't shake the feeling of using the proverbial "sinking ship". For me, WinMo is clearly going the way of the Dodo, and you can feel it. App development is shifting towards Android and the iPhone OS. Looking for the 20 Minuten app? It's iPhone only. Looking for the Swissinfo.ch app? Android only. Looking for toppreise.ch? Android + iPhone. WinMo is DEAD. It'll take Microsoft a lot of grass-roots work to get the developers to re-adopt the platform once Windows Mobile 7 has arrived (which won't be for another 3/4 year or so). It remains to be seen if the major phone manufacturers like HTC will have the endurance to support the platform until WinMo 7 is out.

While I felt a bit sad to see the gorgeous screen go, I don't miss a single other aspect of the phone and I'm very happy to be back with my Milestone.

[Chuff]

	Quote:	CorsebouTheReturn
	Like it has been said before, the Motorola Milestone won't be available officially with Swisscom. It's not in the Swisscom pro offers neither...

Well it's listed at Auratel, and they are an official Swisscom partner http://www.auratel.ch/cms/index.php?...ch%3Dmilestone

	Quote:	Slaphead
	Well you did show it to a bunch of iPhone users last night. What did you expect?

I expected some common decency. However I realise the reaction was a jealous one and is to be expected when faced with a superior device.

[dawiz]

	Quote:	Chuff
	Well it's listed at Auratel, and they are an official Swisscom partner http://www.auratel.ch/cms/index.php?...ch%3Dmilestone I expected some common decency. However I realise the reaction was a jealous one and is to be expected when faced with a superior device.

The Milestone isn't pretty. It's not meant to be.

[Chuff]

	Quote:	dawiz
	The Milestone isn't pretty. It's not meant to be.

It has an industrial design and masculine lines. It's pretty.

[dawiz]

	Quote:	Chuff
	It has an industrial design and masculine lines. It's pretty.

Let's call it "handsome" :-)

[Castro]

	Quote:	Chuff
	I expected some common decency. However I realise the reaction was a jealous one and is to be expected when faced with a superior device.

Would you considering touring with your device e.g. to Basel

[Chuff]

oops dp....