The Motorola MILESTONE XT720 was released in the summer of 2010 and quickly aimed its weapons at the competition. You’ll find out what I’m talking about in the following review.
Key features
• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 10.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA support
• 3.7" 16M-color capacitive touchscreen of WVGA (480 x 854 pixel) resolution
• Android OS v2.1 Eclair
• ARM Cortex A8 720MHz CPU, PowerVR SGX graphics accelerator; 256 MB of RAM
• 8 MP autofocus camera with xenon flash, AF assist light and geotagging
• 720p video recording @ 24fps
• Wi-Fi and GPS with A-GPS
• 150MB storage, microSD slot, bundled 8GB card
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Ambient light sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
• Great build quality
• microHDMI port with 720p output (bundled HDMI cable)
• Excellent audio reproduction quality
• Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
Let’s take a look in its box. Here, we’ll find a charger head which depends on the also present microUSB cable, a single piece headset, the HDMI cable and an 8 GB microSD card. Is it Christmas already ?
The phone measures 116 x 60.9 x 10.9 mm and has a weight of 139 grams. Despite its pretty bulky look, the phone is actually comfortable in the hand and not a burden to your pocket either. The materials used when designing this phone are of a very high quality: the case is almost fully made of metal, the back is covered by a rubberized clothing and the screen has Corning Gorilla Glass protection. All of these contribute to the solid build of the phone, making it look like a beast that brings fear in the hearts of other delicate droids.
The front of the device is taken by the 3.7 inches TFT capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 854 x 480 pixels. The sunlight legibility is okay and the viewing angles are decent. Above it, there are the proximity and ambient light sensors with the earpiece. Below the display are the four capacitive controls: the Menu, Home, Back and Search keys.
The left side houses the microUSB port, which is protected by a plastic lid. On the right side, you’ll see the volume rocker and a lump near the bottom, which hosts the camera key and a toggle key which switches between the camera modes and the gallery.
On its top, you’ll come across the Power/Lock key, 3.5 mm audio jack and the microHDMI port. The bottom is home for the lonely mouthpiece.
When it comes to software and hardware, the phone comes packed with Android OS v2.1, a nice looking and user-friendly interface backed up by its 600 MHz Cortex-A8 processor with 256 MB RAM and 512 MB ROM. Using the phone will be made in a breeze, as it runs smoothly through the interface, without any lag.
The call quality is very good and so is the reception, but, unfortunately, you don’t get any smart dialing.
The phone does a pretty good job when messaging, typing is very easy and the predictive text system comes in very handy. If you get bored or tired of typing messages, you can use Google speech recognition, which can be very accurate and is really helpful.
The connectivity package carries support for quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, Wi-Fi b/g with DLNA, dual-band 3G with HSPA, with the download speed reaching up to 10.2 Mpbs and 5.76 upload. Bluetooth comes in version 2.1 with A2DP support.
Browsing will be a wonderful experience, for the phone comes with a large display and a great browser, which supports multiple pages, double-tap and multi-touch pinch zooming and others. The pages are loaded fast and look very nice on the roomy screen.
The device comes with an 8 megapixel camera that takes pictures at a maximum resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels and features autofocus, geotagging, face detection and Xenon flash that does a pretty decent job. The image quality is as you would expect it to be, very nice. The video camera shoots 720p clips at 24 fps and is also okay.
The music player supports formats like MP3, WAV, AAC+ and WMA and is satisfying enough even if it lacks equalizer presets or alternative skins. You get a nice feature that enables you to search a song on YouTube or Google by holding your finger on a song. The audio quality is excellent. The MILESTONE XT720 also comes with FM Radio with RDS support.
The video player supports MP4 and WMW and is also decent. Unfortunately, the XviD support is limited.
When it comes to apps, the phone comes packed with some handy ones, like QuickOffice for viewing Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files, but for the editing option, you’ll have to make an upgrade and spend some money. You also have an YouTube application that works just fine. When you’re driving, you can use the Moto Car Home, a homescreen that has bigger icons and allows you to access what you need much faster. The Android Market is there for you if wanting more applications.
The phone comes with a GPS receiver that has A-GPS support and for navigation, it’s loaded with Google Maps and MOTONAV. The second one is only free for two months.
The 1390 mAh battery lasted for almost two days of intensive usage: I’ve made some calls, sent and received more than a dozen of emails, browsed the web for more than one hour a day, listened to music and took a few pictures. I think it did really good, don’t you ?
My final words are that if you need a really well-built phone, with a great browser, decent camera and good battery life, this one is perfect.
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