Motorola Milestone Review

Apologies for the hiatus.  I fully intend to update this blog more now, in fact there are big changes in the future.  Not only do I plan to post more often, but soon I’ll be relocating off of WordPress and on to my very own domain at OnTheWestWind.com.  There will also likely be some theme changes and other work in general on the site.

Anyways, on to the review!

Two weeks ago I bought a Motorola Milestone from Telus here in Canada.  I should start, in a way, by saying that this is the first smartphone that I’ve had and some of the things in this review are possibly generalized to smartphones and the Android OS.  So far it’s been a great experience being on a smartphone in general, but to make things easier let’s break it down into a few sections.  Previous to having a Milestone I was using a combination of an LG Shine and an iPod Touch.  Read on to find out more…

Anticipation

A render of what the final OpenPandora will look like.

In general I try not to let myself fall into the hype of new devices.  Technology can be a miserable sector to get your hopes up anticipating the release of something; there is a constant stream of companies pushing back release dates in everything from software to hardware to video games/consoles.  For the most part, I find myself surprisingly good at resisting the urge to get the latest and greatest, but some times I just flat out fail.

Why Android Changes Everything

I’ve been following the mobile market for quite some time now, starting way back when Palm started releasing their Palm Pilots.  Over the years, my interest had died down since then.   The PDA market dwindled and never really felt like it advanced much, laptops always felt too expensive for what you got and couldn’t handle gaming up until the last few years.  Like many people, however, that interest sparked again upon seeing new devices like the iPod Touch and the EeePC.  Suddenly the market was aware that there was a demand for low cost devices that were very mobile and we’ve had a flood of new companies and devices coming from all sorts of arenas trying to capture that market.

Something new, however, is about to drastically change that market for the better.

Android (The OS that Google created initially for phones) is a rather powerful and mostly open OS. I’m not sure if anyone really understood the impact that it’ll create, though. The OS has already made the leap and is in all sorts of small devices. There are plans to make ARM based Android netbooks (this has been known for awhile) but one of the more recent and, IMO, cooler things has been the Archos 5 Android Internet Tablet. Essentially it’s a PMP (Portable Media Player) with Android on it.

Unfortunately, Archos isn’t exactly the best example of a good PMP… they left out a bunch of features that would be useful (free GPS software, some video codecs, a capcitive touchscreen like the iPhone/iPod Touch, and on device HDMI out). While some of these are resolved through addons you can purchase, you have to buy them, and that seems like a bit of a raw deal when you’ve just bought a $400 PMP.

First Post!

I suppose it’s a very hollow victory to say First Post on  your own blog.  Not like anyone else can actually do anything about that, hmm?

Anyway, welcome to On The West Wind… a blog about technology, science, video games, philosophy, and just about anything else I feel like rambling on about at the time.  My intention is to start out by talking about long term trends in these topics rather than focusing on the ‘hip and now’ that so many other blogs cover.  I also am going to focus heavily on having actual content on the blog rather than links to another blog (which was already a link to yet another blog) with a miniscule comment such as “this is cool” or “doesn’t this suck”.

Having actual quality content will mean that I won’t post as much, but I tend to prefer quality over quantity.  And I do have a day job or two to look after.

In case you are wondering, “On The West Wind” comes from my pen name Locri Epizephyrii, which in turn comes from the ancient Greek settlement of the same name. Epizephyrii is often translated to “on the west wind” although it in fact means “close to the west wind” which is a reference to the city of Locri Epizephyrii being protected due to their location and the west wind.  I became fascinated with this city and area after learning about it studying ancient Greek and Roman culture.  It occurred to me that as someone who has grown up entirely on what is deemed the “Western” side of the world that this is a somewhat fitting name, and the rest is history.