Motorola Milestone review

Known as the Droid in the US - can it beat the HTC Hero?

The definitive Motorola Milestone review
The definitive Motorola Milestone review

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Right, we've been excited about this bit for a while, and for good reason too - the Motorola Milestone packs an awesome little PC secret. Well, we say awesome - it's not the most useful thing in the world but it's still cool.

Buried in the list of applications is the Phone Portal, which asks you to connect the phone via USB or Wi-Fi. It then prompts you to enter an IP address into the browser window, and you're taken to what feels like a secret site dedicated to your phone.

From here you can check out your signal, read text messages, edit your phone book, check photos and lots more. And given that it can be done simply by Wi-Fi makes life a lot less stressful when you're trying to hook your phone up to the PC, although it does highlight how awful a majority of your snaps look.

Motorola milestone

And beyond that, if you want to sync your phone up to the PC with USB, you can use it as a media device with Windows Media Player, making it a lot easier to synchronise video and music that just dragging and dropping files as you have to with other Android phones.

Connectivity is sound as you'd expect with an Android device like this - Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP helps you listen to music with ease wirelessly, and the Wi-Fi, although a little power hungry, is also a good effort.

Motorola milestone

GPS we've covered with Google Maps in the application section, although it must be said it could do with being a little more responsive, and struggles in built up areas. And the phone also packs the super fast 10.2mbps HSDPA 3G connection, which means it will stay fast even when the next generation of 3G masts are deployed in the UK.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.