Motorola Milestone XT First Look

about 1 year ago on 9 June, 2010

Motorola just launched the Motorola Milestone XT, an Android 2.1 device similar to their original Milestone, just without a keyboard, has a better camera and xenon flash, FM radio. It will be selling at up to S$198 exclusively with Starhub with a 2 year contract from tomorrow (10th June 2010) onwards.

Tags: motorola, smartphone

http://www.geraldlum.com/blog Gerald Lum

I’m not sure why starhub is selling Motorola Milestone XT exclusively? The older Milestone is not even selling well. With so many good phone like HTC desire, samsung galaxy s and the upcoming iphone 4, i doubt Motorola Milestone XT is going to stand out from the crowd.

I’m a starhub hubber, kinda disappointed when they did not get the exclusive for samsung galaxy S.
Ang Ah Sin

I was impressed with the HDMI output, 8MP camera with Xenon Flash & Chinese characters input. However, its use of ARM Cortex A8 @ 500Mhz is just not acceptable at this time where all the top players like Samsung & Apple are already at 1GHz.

From the above demo, I saw that the touchscreen is not responsive. Many times, the demonstrator (Daniel I presumed) slide his finger across the screen, up or down, there was no response and he got to redo or touch somewhere else.

Motorola really need to leapfrog in terms of user experience or else it will be left by the wayside.

For those wanting 2.2, if Motorola can commit to a fixed timeframe of 2.2 release, it will be a bonus. Otherwise, upgrade, forget it. “Coming soon”, etc is just a marketing message.

The mobile phone competition is now so intense. With the churning out of models every other day, where do they have the engineers and time to sit down to develop, test & certify 2.2 for the older models and which all will expect it to be free. Many people will not even bother to upgrade and in fact,they might be looking at changing to the next model in the next few months.

Phone manufacturers will rather spend their time developing & testing 2.2 for their new phones.

http://www.justinlee.sg Justin Lee

Do remember the HDMI output is only for video playback. It will not output your screen.

RE the touchscreen, it is actually responsive enough in a more proper usage setting. However it does feel slightly laggy for the scrolling.

RE user experience, the Milestone series is really not meant to be a heavily soup-ed up phone. It’s really meant to be very close to the original android builds.

But I totally agree with you and it is sad to hear about the whole 2.2 upgrade and their commitment. They do have to make sure their chinese input, their camera app, motonav, etc. So, not too sure about that.
http://www.tech65.org/ Daniel

I agree with you and Justin.

It really can’t compare with the Galaxy S or the 3GS (which ironically is using the same Cortex A8, probably at a faster clock speed, though) in terms of performance.

The biggest plus point would be the price, though. I haven’t checked, but this might be the cheapest Android 2.1 phone in Singapore now.

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http://nttup.wordpress.com NTT

Once again we come to the MHz wars.. While a 1GHz ARM A8 would be definitely faster than a 500Hz A8, IMO it doesn’t make sense to compare the specs using the just the speed or version of ARM being used. There are a couple of reasons why.

1. ARM is the ‘core’ of the chip being used. ARM makes designs of the main logic and circuitry of chips, and those are used to make entire (with other controllers, logic, and peripherals) by the chip makers (Qualcomm, Samsung, TI, Apple, etc). So the ARM Core is just one of the components.

2. ARM is a RISC processor. And these architectures are designed to optimize their operation on the fly. Hence, a direct comparison of speed doesn’t really relate to the comparison in performance.

3. Finally, the software (esp the low level SW) has to be customized for the chip (not only the ARM core) which is used. If it is well customized, you can get a huge boost in performance. However, it’s not a easy job and in many companies that’s left undone.
http://www.tentacool.net Jerry

this is one great phone. I have used it for 2 months and I have no regrets. However, I would have preferred the Milestoen XT to still come with a qwerty physical keypad.
MJ

battery life probably is CRAP!! like every other android!

Daniel

daniel@tech65.org

Daniel Tsou is our fabulous host, who decides mostly what we talk about and basically calls the shots, Yes, he does. I, writer of this bio on Mr Tsou is very much afraid that by commiting this post to words, I will be dragged off in the night by a black Truck, or a Segway more like. Other than that, Daniel is tall, lived for a period of time in Venezuela and Spain, and is enthusiastic for all things tech.

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