My contract is coming to an end on my HTC HD so looking at the Nokia N900 but this may be interesting.
Is this Motorola's first foray into heavy duty smartphones? If it's their first, it may be worth seeing user feedback as it goes live? North American market for Smartphones has mainly be based on Blackberry up to the iPhone.
In the past they have often been playing catchup with cutting edge phone technology, the hype that came out with the iPhone launch was bewildering to people in Europe who'd already owned touch screen Smartphones. And it took America a looooong time to get into using SMS when it had been available for a while.
Does "capacitive screen" mean it's the same as the iPhone, where it only needs deliicate contact with the screen rather than having to press/push? That's be cool, no-one seems to have mastered it apart from Apple.
Definatelöy their highest spec handset ever released. The only thing about this phone getting complaints is the keyboard... apparently it's too thin and feedback isn't great. However build quality is said to be awesome, near-bulletproof.
Yup sure does old chap, apparently the Motorolas Milestone's (Eu name for the Droid) is exemplary.
If you order at the published price, that's what you will pay. If the price drops after launch date you still have a contract at the higher price.
I noticed one important thing on that Milestone spec a one line item that is right at the end :
Comment : Multilingual Deutsch, Englisch
Many phone sold here in Switzerland are sold with only one of the three main Swiss languages. You can try to order English versions but it can take a long time or never turn up.
This is very important if you don't know German, French or Italian to a very high technical level (if you want to dig around in menu options).
Other general points to condsider regarding phones old in Switzerland are the operators.
For example a phone may be capable of video calls but this service isn't supported by the operators (as far as I know).
Orange seems to concentrate its support to Apple, Nokia, Sony Ericsson (at present). My HTC HD has a lovely large screen but the Live TV offered by Orange was only supported for Apple, Nokia, SE and few big seller individual phones.
Another thing that Orange doesn't support with niche phones is the auto configuration settings that you can have sent to your phone.
One more general point is that most people interested in mobile phone technology will replace their phone every 12 months so if you do opt for the N900 / Droid and don't like it's not the end of the world.
True, it sometimes doesn't pay to order too early from Digitec. The price tag for the Milestone is definitely going to change, so ordering now would mean paying too much by a large margin.
As for the language: that's mainly an issue with Windows mobile smartphones. Luckily, Android always comes with several languages to choose from. The iPhone's also "multilingual", so is the Palm Pre.
On WinMo, you can't change the language without flashing a different ROM, but you can at least choose from different languages for the auto-correction.
I personally change my phone every 3-4 months - a practice I have to abolish now that I don't work 100% anymore and have to pay for a mortgage :-) So I'm really looking for a phone that I'll keep for a while this time - and the Milestone looks like it's going to be it. Unless I start hearing reports about miserable battery life etc.
I feel like I am wading through rampant Android fanboyism here. These discussions of how quickly the mobile OS market will consolidate and who the winners will be is great fun and all, but lets talk about right now. Obviously, it goes without saying that Android is the mobile OS of the future and is the harbinger of the singularity . Until this future arrives and I have an Android device implanted in my brain (that would be a long-term commitment), I want a new mobile phone to use in the present.
Seeing as we are talking about buying a mobile phone as opposed to investing in Android stock, can someone give us a rundown of the current features/benefits of Android that make it so superior to competing OSs (UIQ, WebOS, Symbian, Maemo, WM6, RIM etc...)?
Unlike the US verison it also has pinch zoom multi-touch... very handy! Included memory card is 8GB though rather than the US Droids 16GB. ALso while it doesn't have the Google navigaiton of its' US brethren, it has MOTONAV software provided by Motorola... and it has a good rep.
Awesome.
Posted above. Uses an old verison of Android too... definately not worth waiting for imo. Typical SE recently i'm afraid, late to the game and with a sub-par software effort.
All specs and comparisons are widely available on Google... as are articles comparing Android to other stuff. Plenty of info for you to browse through. No-one said it was superior to everything else (iPhone takes some beating, and Android is still quite raw in places), but the point is that untold millions are being ploughed into Android as the futures most ubiquitous format . It has Google ploughing their resources into it in a serious way, and several of the biggest mobile manufacturers are now basing entire product lines on it, with others progressing that way. It's not about it being the best, it's about the invitable market share it will enjoy in a relatively short space of time.
That is crazy share in such a short time. Eventually it will start to take over Symbian. That's not fanboyism (I have never owned an android device), that's just an objective view based on overwhelming evidence.
EDIT - But yes i'll shut up and we can leave that for another time. Check out the many videos also on the new features of Android 2.0, there's some nice ones.
The Gartner analysis is not intended to provide consumer guidance, but to help companies who are going to make significant multi-year investments to develop applications for or support mobile devices. Consumers are buying phones on 6-12 month cycles so OS market share forecasts have no impact.
Everything I have read so far says even Android 2.0 is still raw and slow...even on the Droid. I don't find the fact that some future version will inevitably dominate the mobile OS industry a compelling argument to buy a phone now. This is especially true because even if that future version is less raw and faster, it will most definitely require a new phone purchase.
Engadget did a good mobile OS comparison 6 months ago that pretty much ended in a 6-way tie. At this point the hardware is a bigger differentiator than the OS.
There are reasons to buy the Droid, but despite the name, the Android OS is not one of them. In the light of day, the Droid/Milestone is anything but a game changer. It is merely one of many good options available to someone who is in the market for a new phone.
The impact is still all relevant to what you posted. And Android 2.0 may still be a tad raw in places... but definately not slow. Can you pleas elink me to the reviews you mention that say that?
Hi Rich...please don't get me wrong. I don't want to dissuade you from getting the Milestone. It is a seriously sweet phone and I would get one too if I wasn't using Maemo already. What I want to avoid is a bunch of non-early adopters getting it and complaining about Android's lack of polish and apps compared to their friend's iPhone and giving Android a bad name.
Anyway, it looks fast to me because I have a slow, old, S60 phone. I saw a few places where people commented that it was slow, but no first hand reviews that said it was slow.
Milestone Running Android Lots of comments on the video are complaining how the phone is running slow. I guess it depends on your point of reference.
well, bad news guys: according to several posts on German forums O2 won't be selling this one without a payment plan. Apparently they didn't like the fact that some people (like me :-) paid for the Pre in cash, thus evading their 24-month sell-your-soul-to-the-devil plans.
I guess I'll wait for the Digitec version. However, for 999 CHF I definitely won't get it. That's a major rip-off. In Germany, it costs about 750 Fr.
Also, since Vodafone Germany carries the phone, chances are, Swisscom will very soon get it as well (they have most, if not all, of Vodafone DE's handsets).
palmos on the treo650 was really fast. shame they never updated the hardware and got everything rock solid stable. palm engineers know a thing or two about usability.
hopefully the pre will keep them alive - it would be a shame to see them fold. if only they came up with that 5 years ago.
In summary Sets a high bar Sexy Design Great Screen Just adequate Keyboard Generally good performance, but stutters in menus and desktop Horrible camera Moderate battery life Slightly buggy (crashing during calls, GPS inaccurate)