Motorola Milestone 2 review

That’s all very impressive, but as it turns out this isn’t our favourite smartphone, and that slide-out keyboard is one of the main reasons. It looks as if it should make typing a doddle but it doesn’t, and that’s mainly because the action is indistinct and the keys aren’t separated enough. It isn’t a patch on the keyboards on the Desire Z or BlackBerry Bold 9780. It also adds a bulk and weight to the phone that makes it sag in the pocket.

Performance is mixed too. The Milestone 2 has a fast processor and coped well with every game and benchmark test we threw at it. It loaded the BBC homepage in an average of eight seconds, completed the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark in 7 seconds, and its 1GHz processor helped it play everything from Angry Birds to Raging Thunder 2 perfectly smoothly.

It’s odd then, to have to report that the Milestone 2 doesn’t feel 100% responsive in and around the Android OS itself. Flicking from desktop to desktop, for instance, isn’t as buttery smooth as on, say, the HTC Desire Z, and the main app menu judders occasionally too.

The same goes for the 5-megapixel camera, with its dual-LED flash, which we found to be middling in quality. Its stablemate the XT720 has a higher-resolution 8-megapixel camera with a Xenon flash, so we’re nonplussed to see such an inferior snapper here.

The biggest disappointment of all, however, is battery life. After our 24-hour test, only 30% was left on the gauge of the Milestone 2, which puts it firmly in the bottom bracket of smartphones. In the same test, the Desire Z achieved a mighty score of 70% remaining after 24 hours.

Don’t get us wrong, we like the Motorola Milestone 2 in many ways, but that woeful battery life, the iffy keyboard and middling camera mean mean we can’t quite bring ourselves to recommend it. When you consider the HTC Desire Z is available on a broadly similar range of contract prices, we can’t see many choosing this instead.