Motorola Milestone hands on at Starhub shop

Motorola Milestone was released over the weekend exclusively with Starhub. Being an android supporter, I am curious about the phone, it is the best seller in US. I went to Starhub shop at lunch time to try it out. They have a demo set which you can play with.

First impression of the device, it feels good on hand. The phone does not feel heavy or thick on hand. It features a slider keyboard with a slim form factor. It is just slightly thicker than iphone which you probably won't notice. The hardware keyboard is good to press and nice for sending email or sms.

The screen is 3.7 inch, big and clear. Though, it is not AMOLED. The slider keyboard is without spring, you need to push it all the way up. The four button at the bottom of screen are touch based.

The phone is running on android 2.1 where you get live wallpaper and five home screen. I used the phone for a while, tried out the main functions like sms, camera, music player and web browser.

The user interface is standard android home screen, five of them, where you can move around with swipe of finger. The screen feel jerky at time. Either it didn't register the touch or it is slow to respond. The touch is not too bad, but not as good as iphone. Milestone is not alone, Nexus One has the same problem also. Sometime it just lag a bit or didn't register your touch.

Having the hardware keyboard really make the sms experience great. It doesn't take much time to sms your friend. The web browser is doing ok by displaying the web page properly. It does lag a bit at time. The multi touch is working fine with the web browser. When you open the Google Map, mutil touch works also.

The music player is the standard android player. But i have no music file to try out. It has a 5 mega pixel camera, the image quality feels average. The good thing is there is a dedicated camera button. Not able to try out the email function, as it needs you to setup the Google account.

Starhub is selling it at $198 with the lowest voice+data plan. It is definitely good value for money.