Motorola Milestone review

Android and media aren't really the greatest of bedfellows these days, and while that's not been improved on greatly in the Motorola Milestone, the main thing we liked was the fact you could actually look at your videos, your photos or your music without the phone deciding to judder to a halt when you looked at more than one snap at a time.

We're not saying that it's the most super slick experience you'll ever have in your life, but at least the Milestone has a good go at being your dedicated media player - adding an 8GB memory card into the box is always going to help matters as well.

These days, especially with widescreen, high definition screens all the rage on phones, video has come to the fore, and that's apparent on the Milestone, indicated by little things such as the media gallery being set into video mode by default.

Turning the phone on its side will activate a cover flow mode for the video thumbnails, and as mentioned above, the speed at which it can sort through these clips is impressive. Video output itself is a little underwhelming (especially when you consider it's a widescreen VGA (854 x 480) screen) - the likes of the LG Crystal, which is by no means a good phone, is better when it comes to video in our opinion.

However, music playback is becoming more solid on the Android platform too, as while it's still a basic music player, it's becoming a good one, with the options to see album art, shuffle songs and check track listings all from the single landing page (as well as sliding through a song to fast forward as well).

Party mode to cue up some tunes for you and a friend or five is still a little redundant, especially with the tinny sound emanating from the gold rear speaker.

The other element to note is the inbuilt YouTube player - we know it's omnipresent on Google phones (obviously) but it's still a real plus point on the Milestone, as not only does it chuck out video in high quality wherever it can, it's got a nice UI and a quick search box too.

This means that when you're down the pub with your mates and need to prove something via video - you'll be the one with the cool phone that can do it faster than most. When the day comes that BBC iPlayer is available on Android, these phones will certainly take another step towards becoming indispensable.