subject: A Quick Overview of the New Motorola Milestone 2 [print this page] A Quick Overview of the New Motorola Milestone 2
The new smartphone has quite a few much needed improvements, both on the outside and on the inside. The exterior has had minimal changes the only things changed were the "lip", which was moved from the main body to the screen part, and the keyboard that got bumpy buttons (not flat as before, which makes it much easier to type) and got rid of the d-pad in favor of the more usual arrow buttons. The latter was the most awaited change, and now we have another strong competitor in the "good QWERTY keyboards" category.
Internally, the Motorola Milestone 2 got a lot of much needed upgrades, and can now easily compete with most other smartphones on the market in terms of hardware and software power. The new device runs on a 1 GHz TI OMAP processor (which is usually faster than a similar Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU) and has 512 MB of RAM, which should solve the force closing of apps problem, at least until Android 3 or more powerful apps arrive.
Motorola also decided to include 8 GB of internal memory in addition to an included 8 GB micro SD card in the external slot, which is a welcome addition, as you can now delay buying a new external card and have much more memory when you do get one (you can buy a 32 GB now and have 40 GB of total memory or better yet, wait until the 64 GB cards arrive).
The operating system on this beast is of course, the new Android 2.2 Froyo, which comes preinstalled with Motorola's custom Motoblur skin that may annoy a lot of the potential buyers, especially because it can't be uninstalled (it's known to have a lot of bugs, consume a lot of memory and generally be unstable). Aside from this little drawback, the OS is great: it allows you to do anything you want, plus has the big feature: Flash inside the default browser!
The Milestone 2's other specs also got brought up to date: Wifi now supports the much speedier N protocol, the 5 megapixels camera got improved still shots and 720p at 30fps video capabilities, and the battery got upgraded to a 1400 mAh one that should last a bit more time before it needs recharging. The screen is the same old 3.7 inch Gorilla glass covered unit with a 854x480 resolution, which isn't bad at all, as it still is one of the best looking capacitive displays on any smartphone.
Overall, the Milestone 2 is a great upgrade to the old model and a welcome addition to the world of Android phones. If you want to get a new, more powerful smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard, then you should seriously consider picking up a mobile contract for this device.
