Motorola XT883 (Motorola Milestone 3 / DROID 3)

Available now (China)
19th June 2011

Officially called the Motorola XT883, this new Android device can best be thought of as the China Telecom version of the forthcoming Motorola Milestone 3 and Motorola DROID 3.

This is a CDMA device, but the Milestone has always been available in both CDMA/EVDO and GSM/UMTS flavours, with the best-known CDMA version being sold under the "DROID" name on Verizon Wireless. We can probably expect to see an official announcement of the DROID 3 and Milestone 3 devices very soon.

The XT883 updates the old Milestone 2 significantly. Inside is a dual-core 1GHz processor, which is pretty standard for a high-end smartphone these days, although some rivals devices are even faster. Surprisingly Motorola say that the arrangement gives only a 27% speed boost over the previous single-core Milestone 2. Motorola have increased the size of the display to 4.0" from 3.7", and it now has a resolution of 540 x 960 pixels (qHD). On the back is an 8 megapixel camera with 1080p HD video capture plus an LED flash, and there's also a secondary camera for video calling.

One other notable improvement is the keyboard, which now sports a row of number keys, and it is certainly a huge improvement over the original Milestone. Internal memory is a substantial 16GB of flash, plus a microSD slot that can take another 16GB.

Motorola haven't said what physical size the XT883 is, but the larger screen does mean that the upcoming Milestone 3 and DROID 3 is likely to be bigger than the previous generation.. the bad new is that your old DROID and Milestone accessories probably won't fit.. but it is possible that the XT883 might use the same peripherals as the Motorola ATRIX.

The Motorola XT883 runs Android 2.3 with some additional enterprise tools added on. Motorola's reputation has suffered lately because of a lacklustre approach to supporting software updates. Hopefully this situation will improve with the Milestone 3.

There's not a lot of difference between the ATRIX and the XT883 (or DROID 3 or Milestone 3). The XT883 has a better camera and the slide-out keyboard plus the latest version of Android, but other than that the ATRIX is more-or-less a keyboardless version of this handset.

Motorola haven't published a full spec sheet yet for this device, so we can't be certain how big it is, what the battery life is or a number of other basic details. We do know that the XT883 should be available during Q3 2011 on China Telecom, and our best guess is that we'll see a worldwide version released at roughly the same time.