Motorola MILESTONE XT720 deals & review

In a word or two

The Motorola Milestone XT720 has a distinctive design and a focus on media prowess.

The Design

The otherwise fairly standard smartphone look of the Motorola Milestone XT720 is elevated by the slight kink on its right-hand side. This lends the design its distinctive nature and also serves a more practical purpose – it ensures the phone feels more like a camera when you’re holding it on its side and taking a photo.

So from a short glance, you can tell the XT710 concentrates more firmly on the media elements of a phone than the original Milestone does. And compared to its predecessor, the Motorola Milestone XT720 is slim at just 10.9mm – the same slenderness at the Samsung Wave and making it one of the thinnest Androids on the market currently.

The capacitive screen measures 3.7 inches and comes with touch-sensitive navigation keys, support for multi-touch input, and a proximity sensor for automatic turn-off. The screen is the same as the first Milestone but the XT720 is thinner because it comes without the slide-out QWERTY keyboard. This phone is perfect for you if you enjoy touchscreen smartphones with all the technology and features but none of the additional weight of housing a physical keyboard – although, actually, the lack of a keyboard only reduces the weight by 5g to 160g but the extra features compensate for this easily.

Specifications

Like the latest Acer device, the Acer Stream, the Motorola Milestone XT720 runs on the Android 2.1 platform. This OS can be upgraded to the 2.2 version upon its release, so the Motorola Milestone XT720 will support Flash 10.1 in time. Meanwhile, there are ample features for enjoying visual attributes. These include an incredible 8-megapixel camera with Xenon flash, a first for an Android. Combine this with a 10x zoom, and you should be able to take professional-standard images on your phone – which is a fantastic addition to a smartphone, almost placing it level with the 12-megapixel camera on the Nokia N8.

And the video captures HD-quality images so both still and live images will be high quality. The internal memory can be increased to up to 32GB, which may be needed to house all your movies and photos – not to mention music and any other apps you may want to download from the Android Market.

Browsing is another highlight on the Motorola Milestone XT720, and the phone has capacity to support up to 8 open browser windows. This means the phone is good for social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, as well as using for work purposes, as you can have several websites open at once. The multiple email accounts also let you stay on track with your work and home life, checking both simultaneously.

Considerations

Motorola’s MotoBlur interface, which made its debut on the Dext, is not included on the XT720 so if you’re a fan of social networking you may be a bit disappointed.

Verdict

With an excellent video and camera onboard, an HDMI connector for linking the phone to your TV, and multiple features and apps, the Motorola Milestone XT720 is a tempting device.