Milestone Goods and Other

[Guest Michael Perry]

I just got the Milestone from Amazon US yesterday evening so have spent the day futzing with the real keyboard, trying to get the same applications installed as on my Hero and also learning my way around the phone. The milestone is definitely nice but I have not used a Droid in comparison. I do have a HTC Hero running Paul's 3.0 ROM which I am very happy with. Just a few points I have observed thus far:

1. The ATT Sim Card works but the edge data does not by default. You have to create a new APN file. There is no "turn off Mobile Network Option I can find like on the Hero. I am assuming there is a way to do this but I have not found it yet. Battery life sucked leaving the "always on mobile networks" thing engaged all the time so I'm judging its the same as on my milestone.

2. When I remove the ATT sim card, all the paid applications on the market go away completely even though I have a wifi access defined. That seems kinda strange.

3. Battery life seems rather bad at times. On my Hero with the wifi always going, I could wait a day or two; but the Milestone is hungry for power it seems.

4. The default calendar with different applications for corporate and personal is not my favorite thing. I like the integrated calendar like on the Hero with a Sense UI installed. It makes me more productive to see my google and exchange calendars color-coded.

5. Setting up an exchange 2007 account was easy it seems to me. We use a self-signed certificate and had no issues getting it working.

Overall, the UI is sufficiently different and the keyboard still takes me some getting used to. Root is definitely needed so I can run the market enabler when I travel to India and singapore and to use the backup for root users. The applications run very nicely though and I like the heft of the phone. its a rather sturdy little beast it seems to me and when its "hand bound" you can tell you are holding something. The Hero seems very light in comparison.

Hopefully root comes along very shortly for this thing.

[Guest blazingwolf]

4. I'm using CalWidget for my calendar. It has the ability to see both Corporate and Gmail calendars on the Droid so I would think it would work on the Milestone. It is free on the market.