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Motorola MILESTONE hits the UK via eXpansys

by Scott Bicheno on 11 December 2009, 13:37

Tags: eXpansYs, Motorola (NYSE:MSI)

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What's in a name?

Motorola is continuing its strategy of giving phones a different name in the US and over here.

Recently, it launched the first smartphone to run the latest version of Google's Android operating system - 2.0 - in the US and called it DROID. By the time the DROID made it over here, and recently went on sale at smart mobile device specialist eXpansys, it had been renamed the MILESTONE.

The DROID/MILESTONE has been pretty well received over in the US, being viewed as Motorola's first credible challenger to Apple's high-end smartphone dominance. It has even been named ‘Gadget of the year' by Time magazine. As well as running Android 2.0, it has a processor based around ARM's Cortex A8 design running at 550MHz under the hood.

As high-end smartphones go the price seems to be middling, with eXpansys offering it SIM-free for £449.99 or for £49.99 as part of a £35 per month, 18 month T-Mobile contract.

Here's a piccie of the DROID and a clip from Motorola's MILESTONE ad campaign.

 

 

 

HEXUS Forums :: 8 Comments

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Posted by miniyazz - Fri 11 Dec 2009 13:54
At what point did £450 become “middling” smartphone price? You can buy a 16GB iPhone 3GS from Tesco for less than that.
Posted by Gunbuster - Fri 11 Dec 2009 14:52
miniyazz
At what point did £450 become “middling” smartphone price? You can buy a 16GB iPhone 3GS from Tesco for less than that.

You can't Sim Free though. Having said that £450 is silly money.
Posted by miniyazz - Fri 11 Dec 2009 15:22
Gunbuster
You can't Sim Free though. Having said that £450 is silly money.

True, although you could probably unlock it if you wanted to for a nominal sum of say ~£20 for use with at least o2 and orange. If you wanted to, since that comes with unlimited internet despite being PAYG :p

Anyway, I'm sure there're other routes of buying these things if you don't want to spend full price. My HTC Touch HD, for example, I bought from eBay at £320, one week old as new condition. Another £15 to unlock it, and I'd still knocked ~£100 off retail price of what was then a top-of-the-range phone. A quick google suggests the Touch HD 2 can be readily had sim-free for <£500, and that is surely one of the very best smartphones around - I maintain £450 is not ‘middling’ money for a smartphone :p
Posted by Gunbuster - Fri 11 Dec 2009 15:34
As much as I like HTCs stuff I am really interested to see what Huawai who made the T-Mobile Pulse do. A sub £100 payg Andriod phone is the sweet sport for me.
Posted by McPhee - Sat 12 Dec 2009 00:46
miniyazz
A quick google suggests the Touch HD 2 can be readily had sim-free for <£500, and that is surely one of the very best smartphones around - I maintain £450 is not ‘middling’ money for a smartphone :p

£500 is the standard launch price for smartphones, it has been for years. That's why the Milestone's price is noteworthy. It's launching below the average price. It's also an oddity considering the reputation that it has built up in the States. Accounting for that, it's premium build quality and the QWERTY keyboard it could easily have cost £100 more at the same price point as the Touch Pro 2, Xperia (X1 and X2) and various other “premium” devices while still being comparatively good value.

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