A first look at the Motorola Milestone/Droid
Another iPhone killer?!?! – Oh come on …
The first Android device I ever used was the G1 and I think it was a good beginning for Android. Today I was able to put my hands on the Motorola Milestone/Droid device and I have to say that I really like what Motorola has to offer.
The device has a nice large touch screen with four touch sensitive buttons (Back, Menu, Home, Search) at the bottom of the screen. These buttons look really good to me and I think they are a good alternative to physical hardware buttons because they are integrated in the device design. The Milestone screen covers approx. 85% of the front part of the device. This is a bigger percentage than the screen area of the G1 or even the iPhone. Furthermore the device is quite thin although it has an integrated external keyboard. This makes the device comfortable to transport even though it is quite heavy compared with the iPhone.
What I really like about this device is the high resolution screen. I think I have never seen that good and clear color tones on a mobile device. While using the Motorola device I noticed that loading web pages in a WLAN was a bit slower than with the iPhone. Something that until now was really missing on android devices was the multitouch support. The Milestone device supports this feature although it only works on pictures but sadly not on web pages or on the maps application. I also have to say that as an iPhone user I definitely enjoyed the fact not having to register my device via iTunes . The process of initializing the android device is as simple as inserting an arbitrary email account. Of course I also adore the multiple setting options, the multitasking functionality and the easy way of launching Java applications on the device (Not to mention the development with Eclipse).
Finally the inevitable question: “Is this device an iPhone killer?” You could say that the Motorola hardware is slightly better than the one of the iPhone because of the better camera, the replaceable battery, the better screen resolution etc. But this is not really the point. I think the user interface or to the operating system capabilities are more important. The lather has been improved on the Motorola device with Android 2.0. This offers lots of new options, e.g. support for Microsoft Exchange or HTML-5. Also the design, the new contact list or e.g. the virtual keyboard have been improved in Android 2.0. However there are some aspects, like the usability, performance or multimedia support, which could be still improved in Android. So it is true to say that Android is not perfect but indeed close on Apples heels.
The main issue that I see for Android is that their operating system is designed to work on a big range of devices. Apple in contrast just needs to concentrate on one device type. The optimization is therefore easier for Apple. This is definitely a big challenge for Android but at the same time a possibility to catch up a good position in the mobile market.