Motorola Milestone 2 review

We didn’t like the original Motorola Milestone much when it first came out over a year ago, mainly due to its rather ugly, awkward design. The Milestone 2 has addressed those concerns, smoothing off the corners and edges and delivering a phone that’s much more comfortable in the pocket and the hand.

It isn’t just the design that’s seen an improvement. Motorola’s flagship handset has Android 2.2 with Flash 10.1 support, a bright and clear 3.7in capacitive touchscreen with a 480 x 854 resolution, a 1GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, 802.11n Wi-Fi support and a slide-out Qwerty keyboard for those who just don’t get on with onscreen text entry.

It also comes with Motorola’s latest version of Motoblur. This manages all your email and social networking needs, delivering updates from Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn, Last.FM, Picasa, Flickr and more, via a selection of resizable desktop widgets.

These widgets are pretty slick, but they’re not the only thing we like about Motorola’s software. Drag and drop any icon or widget on one of the Milestone 2’s seven desktops, and any other icon in the way will move out of the way for it. With the standard Android desktop you have to make space for an icon or widget before dropping it in place.

And there’s also a huge variety of useful, pre-installed apps for you to play with too. The DLNA media server app allows you to stream video and audio over the network from and to compatible devices, but also copy files to and fro. Mobile Hotspot lets you turn your phone into a wireless router, so non-3G devices can use its 3G connection. And Motorola also includes a copy of Swype, the innovative text-entry system that allows you to trace-out letters to enter words, rather than tap the screen.