A lot of fuss has been made over Motorola’s Droid smartphone, about how it saved the US handset manufacturer’s bacon.

Now that the Droid has been released to markets outside the US, including SA — under the Milestone moniker — it’s hard to see what all the excitement was about. Fact is, the Milestone is a fairly bland Android handset in an insanely competitive field.

Yes, it has a robust build, and when the slide-out keyboard snaps out and into position it exudes quality construction. But compared to the HTC Desire — arguably its biggest competitor for now — the Milestone comes up second. For one thing, the Desire just looks better, with its refined curves. The Milestone, on the other hand, looks like it was conceived by someone lacking design sensibility.

The Motorola device’s main selling point is its snap-out Qwerty keyboard. The company has done a good job of packing a 3,7-inch touch screen and the slide-out keyboard into a space not much thicker than most touch-screen-only devices. And the keys are big enough to ensure quick typing, even for people with meaty fingers.

The Milestone ships with Android 2.1, and Motorola has promised this will be upgraded to 2.2 starting in September. However, there’s no word yet on when the upgrade will reach SA Milestone users.

Under the hood, the Milestone has a 600MHz Cortex processor (slower than the Desire’s 1GHz Snapdragon), a 3,7-inch, 480×854-pixel display (versus the 480×800-pixel, 3,7-inch screen on the Desire) and third-generation broadband with high-speed packet access of up to 10Mbit/s.

There’s also a 3,5mm audio jack, and the smartphone is charged via a micro USB port, now an industry standard. And it has a 5-megapixel autofocusing camera with LED flash.

Like other Android devices, SA users don’t have access to paid-for applications in the Android Market. Google’s turn-by-turn navigation software also doesn’t work here yet.

Don’t get us wrong: there’s plenty to like about the Milestone. We particularly appreciate the dock that comes bundled with the phone. Slide the Milestone into it sideways and it doubles as a bedside clock and charger. Nice touch.

But the Milestone, which is only available from MTN on a contract, lacks the slick Sense user interface found on HTC handsets and, though Android is already quite refined in version 2.1, it lacks some of the slick polish of Sense.

Market rumours suggest an upgraded Milestone will be arriving on these shores soon, so consumers are probably best advised to hold off any purchasing decision anyway.

Besides, unless they really must have an Android device with a Qwerty keyboard, they may as well go for the HTC Desire instead. If the keyboard is not a consideration, the HTC is clearly the better of the two devices.

Motorola will have to come up with something better than the Milestone — and soon — if the device isn’t to become a brief upward blip in the company’s long slide into cellular obscurity. — Duncan McLeod, TechCentral