Motorola Milestone 3

Available now
26th September 2011

There's good news and bad news for Motorola fans. Firstly, the Motorola Milestone 3 is available to buy right now. The bad news is that it appears to be shipping to South America only and there is no indication that it will ever arrive in Europe.

The Milestone 3 should be Motorola's flagship device - it's a sort-of ATRIX with a keyboard - but earlier Milestone devices didn't sell very well in Europe and this is perhaps the reason behind Motorola's reluctance. However, the low sales may be due more to deficiencies in marketing rather than the handset itself, as the equivalent DROID line in the US sells very strongly.

We've seen two versions of this phone previously, the DROID 3 and the XT833 smartphones. The Milestone 3 is basically almost identical with a 4" 540 x 960 pixel display, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 8 megapixel primary camera, video calling, a 1 GHz dual core CPU and 512MB of RAM, all running the Android 2.3 operating system, and of course it has all the usual Android features such as GPS, WiFi, 3.5G support and a microSD slot

The main selling point with the Milestone 3 is the large QWERTY keyboard which even sports a row of number keys. It is much easier to use a keyboard like this than the on-screen keyboard if you are doing a lot of text entry. There are also a useful range of accessories such as a docking station, and all-in-all the Milestone 3 is a nice device, even if it isn't as powerful as some rivals.

You can buy the Milestone 3 now in Brazil and it is coming to Argentina in November, other countries should follow by the end of the year. There's also a Canadian version called the Motorola XT860 4G, and of course there's the DROID 3 in the US.

If you live in Europe and want a QWERTY-equipped smartphone then your choice is pretty much limited to the HTC Desire Z which is getting rather old, or perhaps a Milestone 2 if you hunt around. There is a rumour that there will be a QWERTY-equipped "pure Google" Nexus phone coming out before the end of the year, most likely from Samsung. That might well appeal to potential Milestone 3 customers who are missing out.