Today’s post is different. Today is about the Google Android Operating System and specifically the Motorola Milestone (Canadian cousin of the Motorola Droid). This is my first product review, and the only reason that I’m giving it is that I bought this phone for my own personal use and have been using it for several months now.

I’m providing this review, not as an attempt to provide an unbiased snapshot of a product, but to provide an admittedly biased, personal view of a product that I’ve found that fits my needs. Take it with a grain of salt, and remember that this is the phone I recommended for myself after exhaustive research, but it might not be the right phone for you. There are also newer phones out, that I would buy instead, had they been available way back when.

I’m ready to give my opinion on the operating system and the specific phone. I’m going to begin by describing the criteria I used to choose a phone, and then how the phone I bought does or doesn’t live up to my expectations.

What I Wanted in a Phone

I need a cell phone for my job. I do a lot of travelling around and meeting with people. Staying connected is important, and I wanted people to be able to phone me or email me and be sure I’d get the message wherever I was.

I wanted a device that I could load audio, audiobooks and video onto, and be able to play media on a nice, clear screen. I wanted a device that could map locations and present information about geographic data.

I wanted a device that is simple, intuitive, and put together well. I wanted a device that had wifi and a good Internet experience. I wanted a device with a physical keyboard, because I really didn’t trust on-screen keyboards to be able to do the job.

I had a bias toward Google Android products as I began. I had heard a lot about this new phone operating system, and I wanted it to live up to the hype. I was particularly excited about the potential for a free turn-by-turn car-navigation program provided by Google.

Shopping

I was amazed when I began looking around at the phones available on the market, how few of them met my criteria. I have high standards, it’s true, but there were very few phones that were capable of doing what I wanted them to do. I fairly quickly narrowed my list to three possibilities:

1. The Palm Pre
2. The iPhone
3. The Motorola Droid

Two of the three were available in Canada when I began looking. The Droid wasn’t, and still isn’t, because in Canada Motorola now offers the Milestone instead. It’s a cousin of the Droid. Same hardware and form factor, with slightly different software and features.

I liked the Palm Pre. I thought it might win out at first. I’ve owned many Palm products in the past and have always liked them. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that Palm’s marketing efforts weren’t going to be able to get them back into contention. The iPhone and Android were going to be the two heavyweights and Palm, I’m sorry to say, comes up a little short. I would be very happy to be proved wrong. I really like Palm, and I hope they can get back in the game.

I was biased against the iPhone from the beginning, I’m afraid. Both of my brothers are Mac guys, and I just can’t picture myself on the other side. I like the iPhone. I was impressed with it, but I was glad not to have to buy one. Also, it didn’t have a physical keyboard, which concerned me.

The reason that I went with the Android operating system is the same as why I’ve always bought PCs. Android is produced by many different manufacturers, all of them working with a unified OS that I can easily upgrade. And, it had all the things I was looking for, although if I’m really honest, some of the things I was looking for I was only interested in because I knew they were available because of the Android OS.

The Android OS has been out for more than a year now, and there are phones from a lot of different manufacturers available. But, none of the phones that have come out thus far have really made me confident that they can live up to the hype.

The Droid was the first phone that really made me believe it was possible for an Android phone to live up to what was promised. Since I made my purchase, the Google Nexus One has come out, and there’s no question in my mind I’d take a Nexus One over my Milestone. The Droid X is about to be released, and I expect it will easily move into the top spot on my wishlist over the Nexus One.

I think Android is the future, and that’s why I bought one for my own use.

What I Like:

I like the screen. It’s bright and clear, and it adjusts to the appropriate level of brightness automatically.

I like the Operating System. It’s simple, it’s functional, it’s speedy, and it makes sense. I didn’t need to spend long getting used to this phone. A few things weren’t intuitive for me, but I was up to speed in five minutes and had everything figured out within the day.

I like the Apps. The Android Marketplace has thousands of useful and clever applications, many of which are free. Most of those that do cost money cost less than $5 and often have a free ‘lite’ version you can try out and keep if it does all you need it to.

One of the Apps I use is a guitar tuner. I’d have to pay $50 to get a good guitar tuner, but this one that I downloaded for free does an excellent job. Other apps suggest local restaurants, let me edit Word documents, or do something silly like light saber sound effects.

I like the Internet. Wifi is easy to set up. The browser that ships with the Milestone allows ‘pinch and pull’ zooming, which is great. That feature is really crippled throughout the Android OS for fear of lawsuits, but it’s nice to be able to use it at least on the browser. I’ve recently tried the beta of the Opera browser, and it is amazingly fast on this phone.

I like the Maps. Google Maps is great, and being able to access it wherever I happen to be is fantastic.

I like the Onscreen Keyboard. I would have assumed that I would always be pulling out the real keyboard, but have been surprised how quickly I got comfortable with the onscreen version. I had heard that the Droid didn’t have ‘pop-up’ indicators to tell you which button you had pressed, but the Milestone does. I guess they figured they could get away with it in Canada, but might be sued in the US by the friendly folks at Apple for being too much like the iPhone. I still do use the full keyboard for longer messages and like it, but I’m comfortable with both keyboards, which really surprised me.

What I Don’t Like:

I don’t like that Google Nav was delayed in Canada. One of the key features I was looking forward to in this phone was the GPS navigation. In Canada, every GPS needs to be bi-lingual capable, and it took Google a while to get the French language figured out. Until they did, they were unable to provide the service. Fortunately, it’s now available, but the months spent waiting with no idea of the timetable and no hints when the product might be ready were frustrating, and par for the course with Google. They don’t under-promise, they don’t over-promise, they don’t promise at all. But they do deliver…eventually.

I don’t like that the auto-correct always moves my colons when I try to make a smiley face. I attempt to do a smiley face but auto-correct turns it into a garble by moving the colon to before the space: )   A small annoyance, but you would think someone would have tuned the auto-correct to deal with such a commonly-used combination of symbols.

The slider keyboard, which was a major factor in making my purchase decision, has started to get just a little bit loose. I’ve had the unit 6 months, which is about 1/6th it’s expected life. It’s nowhere near breaking, but it’s loose enough that I have started to go easy on it, for fear it might wear out before the rest of the unit. Had I to do it all again, I would certainly go with a phone with no physical keyboard. Ironically, the one thing that I absolutely insisted on to begin with may wind up being the thing I most regret insisting on.

I disliked the lack of Audible support for the Android OS, but I have good news. I happen to be a part of the beta-testing program for an Audible player for Android, and I can report that good progress is being made. I have no insight as to when a final product might be released to the general public, but I can testify that the team is working hard and the product is stable, which it wasn’t when I joined a little over a month ago. I think it’s possible they’ll have something ready by Fall 2010, and would be very surprised if it wasn’t ready before the end of 2010.

I don’t like the long delay in providing OS upgrades. Telus still hasn’t pushed out Android OS 2.2 Froyo to Milestone owners as of this writing, and it’s been available for some time on other handsets. I don’t know what the hold-up is, but I’m eager to get my hands on the new OS, and annoyed at the delay.

Conclusions

Knowing what I know now, I would still have picked up a Motorola Milestone when I did. Looking back, it was months before something was available that was compellingly superior, and then I would have paid a steep premium for it.

I would have preferred to be able to wait for the Nexus One, with it’s processor that runs at twice the speed. I would have preferred to wait for the Droid X, with it’s faster processor and dedicated graphics memory, but I needed a phone when I needed a phone, and given the options available at the time, I’m confident that I made the best choice for my needs of the available options.

I hope some day to upgrade to some super-snazzy new Android device which blows away anything on the market today. In the meantime, I’ll just be drooling over the Milestone X when it’s finally available for sale up here in Canada (sigh) until I can convince my wife my Milestone deserves a proper burial, and I can justify an expenditure on the latest and greatest once more. Then, I will exit the store, hold aloft the best mobile phone I can eke out of my budget and glory in the technological awesomeness… for the entire three weeks it takes until something new comes out that makes it seem old and out-dated.

What is refurb?

There are a number of reasons why a machine might be marked refurbished. It might be that the item was returned to the store and sent back to the factory. As someone who worked on a return desk, I could tell lots of stories about items that were returned for no reason, or at least no good reason. If the factory determines that nothing is wrong with the item or that the problem can be easily corrected, then they will simply repackage the item and ship it back out as a refurb.

Sometimes an item is marked refurbished because it was damaged in shipping or while on the sales floor, and the damage is only cosmetic. A product can also be sold as refurbished because it was a demonstration unit. Clearance merchandise that hasn’t been sold or damaged can sometimes be marked as refurbished as well.

Whatever the reason it was marked down, refurbished equipment can be a good buy. It helps stores and manufacturers recover the cost of returned items and it can mean a great deal for you.

What you need to watch out for

Most stores have a different return policy for refurbished items. The return may be exchange-only, the window of time for returns may be shorter, or the item may not be returnable at all. Be sure you understand how the store handles refurbished returns and how they may differ from the store’s normal return policy.

Sometimes a store will sell refurbished equipment alongside the new stuff. This is an excellent opportunity to compare prices and return policies. For example, an MP3 player that would normally be $100 with a one month return policy compared with a refurb for $30 and an exchange-only return allowed for one week. Clearly the price is right, and if you aren’t picky, then this might be a fairly obvious choice. But, if you buy the unit and realize later that it doesn’t have a function you consider crucial or it doesn’t perform as you want it to, you might regret spending your $30 on something you’re not happy with.

Buying refurb makes sense when:

1. You’re sure about what you want and know that this model is the right one
2. There’s a deep discount in the price
3. You are comfortable with the return or exchange time frame
4. You don’t care about imperfections or cosmetic damage
5. You’re comfortable with the store’s reputation
6. They have several refurb items in stock, allowing you to choose the best of what’s available

I have purchased many refurbished items over the years. I tend to buy refurbished for items that I want but don’t need. When I’m buying something that I really rely on or a product that I don’t know much about, I tend to opt for new unless the discount is really deep.

The store you’re shopping at also makes a difference. If it’s a store that I shop at regularly, I’m more likely to trust the items they put on refurb. Putting an item on refurb is a judgement call on behalf of the store, and you want to make sure you’re shopping at a place where they exercise good judgement. A store with nothing to lose in terms of their reputation has no incentive to avoid unloading their junk on you.

There have been a few times that I’ve bought a refurbished product that I was unhappy with, but the same could be said of my new purchases as well. It can be easy to blame my dissatisfaction on the fact that the item is refurb, when it just might be that I got suckered by clever marketing on a substandard product.

Buying refurb doesn’t always make sense, but there are times when the deal is too good to walk away.

Memory in a Flash

Flash memory is very useful stuff. It holds the pictures, songs and videos in your camera or portable device. It stores your files on your thumb drive. The best part is, it’s non-volatile, which means it doesn’t need a constant flow of electricity like the RAM in your computer. There are dozens of varieties of flash memory, and I’m not going to describe each of them here, I’m just going to focus on the three most popular.

SD

SD memory, created by memory manufacturer SanDisk, is probably the most common form of flash memory available. The initials stand for Secure Digital, not SanDisk, though. It’s inexpensive, it’s widely available, and it comes in several sizes, including mini and micro, which are more compact forms that fit well into smaller devices like cell phones, which are constantly looking for ways to reduce size.

The original specification for SD cards only worked up to sizes of 2GB. A whole new specification called SDHC, the HC standing for High Capacity expands the amount of memory that SD cards can hold beyond 2GB. Devices created before the new specification was finalized will not be able to use the newer cards. So, be sure your device has SDHC stamped on it, not just SD before you buy a card bigger than 2GB, or you may be disappointed. However, the specification has been in place for several years, so devices that won’t handle the new stuff are getting more and more rare.

Compact Flash

Compact Flash is generally limited to high-end Digital SLR cameras. You don’t find it elsewhere very often. Compact Flash is much larger and heavier in physical size, but it has a significant advantage over SD in speed and capacity, which is why it is popular among high-end camera manufacturers. Just like SD is coming out with new specifications to allow for more memory and speed, CF is also developing new specifications which will allow for better performance. So, it’s important to know what revision number (1.0, 2.0, etc) your camera will handle so you don’t wind up buying a card that won’t work with your camera.

Memory Stick

Sony really likes to be original. They usually wind up doing their own thing and no one else joins in. Memory Stick is a format that only works with Sony devices. It’s the only other format that has any real traction in the marketplace, but no one else seems to be interested in using it. It has gone through several revisions from MS to MS Pro, which offer higher capacity, better speed and smaller size, just like SD and CF.

Shopping around

Finding the right memory for your camera isn’t that hard unless you’re buying memory for old equipment. If your camera is more than 2 years old and you’re buying the largest capacity card you can find, it’s generally a good idea to pull out the manual for your device and compare the specifications it will take with what you’re buying. Either that, or make sure you understand the store’s return policy.

MiniDV

MiniDV, or Miniature Digital Video, was a breakthrough for home video enthusiasts. The format used analog tapes, but encoded a digital signal. This is like the old style modems that sent a digital signal over telephone lines. When it first connected, you heard that series of squeals and beeps that was the sound of digital information being communicated in an audible format. These cameras are all able to transfer video to a computer through a Firewire cable. This technology ushered in the era of desktop video publishing. Software to edit video has become a standard feature for operating systems, and many excellent software video editing packages are available at a reasonable cost.

MiniDV is on the way out as a standard format, and the cameras are starting to get rare in stores. But, no other format has emerged which completely surpasses MiniDV in every respect. Every other format that has come out since MiniDV is also digital, but instead of storing a digital signal on an analog medium, the new formats store a digital signal on a digital medium, like a Hard Drive or Flash Memory. This makes a difference, because analog tapes have way more room for information than a Hard Drive or Flash Memory. That means that MiniDV required very little compression to make things fit. It’s able to store video information that hasn’t been shrunk down to a lower quality. Newer formats, because they have less space to work with, need to compress video down to fit onto a digital medium.

Compressed video isn’t a problem if all you want to do is play the video back. But, if you want to edit the video, then that compression means that you have less raw material to work with. When you apply effects and transitions, a compressed signal is not going to produce as nice a picture as raw video. For most people who just want to capture video of the kids as home movies, this isn’t a serious issue, but if you want to make a short film, you might want to pay attention to how much compression your video camera is putting on the video you capture, and what options the camera has to reduce that level of compression if you want video that is higher quality.

MiniDV tapes can stretch or become caught in the camera mechanism, but on the whole it is still a good option for Standard Definition, because it stores uncompressed video on an inexpensive medium, and the cameras are getting dirt cheap…if you can still find them.

Mini DVD

Mini DVD, which annoyingly has almost the same name as MiniDV, is an all-digital format. DVDs are highly compressed, and the minature discs don’t hold a lot of video. This format is most suitable for those who do not wish to edit video at all. If you primarily want to record and be able to watch the video on your DVD player without having to bother with editing it on a computer, then this might be a good option for you.

The primary drawback of this format is that discs need to be ‘finalized’ before they can be played on a regular DVD player. The process of finalizing a Mini-DVD can take up to twice as long as the recording time. This means that if you shoot an hour of video, it could take the camera as long as two hours after you finish shooting to prepare the DVD for a DVD player. Different cameras do better or worse at cutting this time down, but be aware this can be an issue and read some reviews on the camera before taking the plunge. This format is also on the way out, and while the discs are cheap right now, the cameras are getting rare, and are only available in Standard Definition models.

Hard Drive

Hard Drive video cameras are currently the popular choice. A 30-40 GB Hard Drive will store several hours worth of recording, and offloading it is quick and easy. MiniDV transfers video information in real time. This means that if you want to transfer an hour of video to a computer, it takes an hour to copy it over. Mini DVD takes a long time to finalize a disc. The advantage of a Hard Drive camera is that it stores computer files on a Hard Drive, just like the files you would store on your computer, so when it comes time to transfer from camera to computer, it only takes a few minutes to move those files, just like you were transfering a file from one computer to another. Quick and easy.

The inherent drawback of a Hard Drive camera is that the Hard Drive is sealed inside the camera and you can’t swap it out for another when it gets full. If you’re out shooting for a day or two then returning to your computer, it’s no problem, just offload the files. But, what happens when you go on a two-week vacation? Unless you have a laptop, you might run out of space pretty quick.

The answer is flash memory. When 2GB memory cards were the only reasonably-priced option, buying a dozen of those and swapping them out regularly would be a terrible hassle. But, now that 8 or 16 GB cards are getting into a decent price range, buying several of those cards gives you the flexibility to significantly increase the amount of recording time available on a Hard Drive video camera.

The good thing about Hard Drive cameras is that many of them are available in High Definition formats. This means that they can record in 720 or 1080 resolution. The tricky thing is that the abbreviation for Hard Disk Drive is HDD, and the abbreviation for High Definition is HD. So, there are a lot of letters stamped on the side of one of these units and you need to look closely to see whether it’s a HDD unit, yet only Standard Definition, or both HDD and HD. In order to be able to shoot in HD, a lot of these cameras will significantly compress the image they shoot and often will only offer 1080i resolution (interlaced) which alternates lines of video, not progressive, which displays each line each time. See earlier posts for a further explanation of the difference.

Flash Memory

The next step is to entirely skip the Hard Drive, and only use flash memory. As memory becomes less expensive, this becomes a more attractive option. Without a Hard Drive, the bulk of the unit can be significantly reduced and the power required takes less of a toll on the battery. These cameras can often take High Definition still images, and the line between where Flash Memory camcorders ends and regular Digital Cameras begin blurs a little. This is especially true since some regular Digital Cameras are now offering High Definition video as an option.

If I’m just taking a short video that I want to upload to Facebook or YouTube, then I just use a point-and-shoot Digital Camera. It is able to record at Standard Definition, the video responds reasonably well when I put it into a desktop video editor, and the result is more than enough resolution to look good online. If your job is posting to the Internet, you’ll want a real video camera, but if you’re just having fun, a regular digital camera is really all you need. Some Digital Cameras even come with a ‘YouTube’ mode, which records in the format YouTube uses, to make it easier to upload your videos.

Digital SLRs

Some Digital SLR (Single Lens Reflex) Cameras have begun to offer video. This is a huge development, because the ability to change lenses and control focus directly is really what separates consumer video cameras from professional equipment, and the price difference is HUGE between the two. Now that DSLR makers have started to add in video, they have been able to offer a product that gives amazing control over video shots for thousands of dollars less than professional equipment.

Early DSLR models that offer video do so with some limitations. The units that have just come out tend to overheat if used too long. The auto-focus these cameras use is often designed around taking still pictures and hasn’t yet been optimized to be effective when shooting video, so manual focus tends to be a better option. That manual focus is possible with these cameras is a real positive, but there are times when you just want the camera to do its thing. DSLR Video is still a very new thing, and some of the limitations that currently exist will soon be overcome, but this is a very exciting development and will soon become the must-have tool for those who are serious about shooting amateur video.