Motorola Milestone XT720

Editor's Review of the Milestone XT720

Announced in June 2010 and released a month after in the US and in August in the UK, the Motorola Milestone XT720 is a quad band mobile phone. This handset works on any GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 network, making it an ideal phone for international roaming.

The Motorola Milestone XT720 is a thing of beauty. Coming in an exquisite navy blue casing, it is accented by silver and has a mirrored screen finish.

Measuring at 116 mm. long and 61 mm. across and 11 mm. thick, it is easy to hold and keep in your pocket but the Milestone XT720 is heavier than most handsets that are currently available at 160 grams, making it a cumbersome phone to hold during lengthy conversations.

This is not a problem, though, as you can use the Milestone XT720's speaker phone or plug in a hands-free headset into its 3.5 mm audio jack when you make a long phone call.

A 3.7 inch capacitive touch screen dominates the front part of the Milestone XT720. This touch screen is capable of displaying up to 16 million colours at a resolution of 480 x 854 pixels. What is more, you also get a touch sensitive navigation buttons, a proximity sensor for turning your handset off automatically and an accelerometer sensor for automatically rotating the user interface.

With an internal 512 megabytes of ROM and 256 megabytes of RAM, you get unlimited space for your phone book contacts and call records. You can also extend this memory up to 32 gigabytes, but you can make do with the 8 gigabyte microSD card that is included in the sales package.

The Motorola Milestone XT720 runs on a 550 megahertz ARM Cortex A8 processor and it uses Android Eclair v2.1 as its operating system. This allowed the global communications company to pack the handset with the best features while keeping its price in check.

This is not to say that the Milestone XT720 is an inexpensive mobile phone. On the contrary, it belongs to the priciest range in the Motorola line, and even among all mobile phones. It is, however, worth every penny.

For one, the Milestone XT720 sports an eight megapixel camera that is capable of capturing images of up to 3264 x 2448 pixels in resolution. It comes with a Xenon flash, allowing it to better capture images at night or in low light conditions than mobile phones with LED flashes. It also comes with a bevy of cool features such as auto focus, red eye reduction easy panorama, face detection, face filter, image stabilizer, effects and scene controls. You could also take a burst of six pictures with its multi-shot function.

What is more, you could also capture high definition videos at 24 frames per second with a resolution of 720 pixels. On top of this, you could store and play back AMR NB, WMA, MP3, MPEG-4, AMR WB, WAV, AAC, AAC+, ACC+ Enhanced, MIDI music files and MPEG4, WMV, H.264 video files.

What would you say if you are told that you can use your phone to play back videos on your HDTV? This is what sets the Milestone XT720 apart from similar handsets. The Milestone XT720 comes with a HDMI out port that connects to any high definition TV for really crisp playback of your videos.

Connectivity is at its best as you have the capability to connect to any class 12 GPRS and EDGE networks. You can also connect to the Web wirelessly with any Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g or DLNA network. High speed Internet access is possible with any HSDPA or HSUPA 3G network. Further connectivity is possible with the microUSB port and the Bluetooth compatibility available on the milestone.

Push e-mail is available on the XT720 via both push Gmail and Push Exchange. You also have a stand-alone GPS compass that you could use with Google Maps or MotoNav.

Its Li-Po 1390 mAh battery provides up to 320 hours of stand by time and 4.5 hours of talk time on a 2G network.

Limitations:

Although the camera cannot be faulted, the video capture is quite lacking. For one, you cannot use the Xenon flash to take videos at night, and connecting the Milestone XT720 to an HDTV, the quality of the videos you take with the handset are not really as crisp looking as it should be.