Motorola Milestone XT720 announced: 8 megapixel cam, 720p video, and Droid heritage (update: video!)
By Vlad Savov 
posted June 7th 2010 4:00AM
posted June 7th 2010 4:00AM
P.S. We're told this handset is closer to the Motoroi than anything else, Motorola describes them as sister devices. We also spotted a network update from Orange on the demo handset, implicating it as a possible carrier for the XT720 in the UK.
Update: We've now got Motorola's full press release plus a promo video after the break, as well as some comparison pics between this new handset and the original Milestone in the second gallery below.
Update 2: And we've just added our hands-on impressions and video, you know where to find them.
Okay, so Motorola's big push here is "real world performance," meaning that we shouldn't just report the cold hard specs but also note how swift and buttery-smooth the XT720 is in use. Which tends to be exactly what people say when they're trying to promote a 550MHz processor in a gigahertz world. But let's not be too hasty here, it's quite true that the stock Android 2.1 ran without any hitches while we were playing with this new Milestone, and Moto is confident enough to say that this handset is "Flash 10.1-ready," suggesting Froyo is going to come out of the pantry at some point. Determining whether these claims stand up to scrutiny will require us spending some more quality time with the XT720.
One thing we can say already, though, is that the ergonomics of the phone feel all wrong. The surface of the touchscreen had too much friction to it, preventing the featherlight swipes that characterize the finest devices in this class, and the redundant protrusion on the lower right of the phone also doesn't help things. You'll see both problems in our hands-on video below -- sure, we're clumsy at the best of times, but the XT720 didn't help one-handed operation with its odd shape. Then there's also -- a more aesthetic concern here -- the fact that the front and back parts seem to have been designed by different teams. The matte blue backplate is in the spirit of the Droid, dominated by angles and straight lines, while the front end exhibits curves, a glossy metallic surround, and an ultra-glossy display. Go figure.
The overall vibe we got from this meetup was one of mild disappointment -- many of us have been breathing heavily in anticipation of a keyboard-less Droid, but if this is the best Moto can do, we'll just have to look elsewhere. The XT720 is 10.9mm thick to the Droid's 13.7mm, but as you can see in our comparison gallery, that's not really a tangible difference when you look at the two phones side by side ... in the real world.
Either way, this blast from the xenon flash future is coming at us fast, with pre-orders starting from online retailers like Play and Expansys on June 11, and carrier announcements set to follow swiftly. We've already mentioned Orange as a pretty likely candidate, and the XT720's spec sheet also throws up 1700/2100 3G frequencies, which makes it compatible with T-Mobile's network in the USA -- should Moto decide to visit the phone upon its home market. [Thanks, tnkgrl]
BASINGSTOKE, UK – June 7, 2010 – Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) today announced MILESTONE™ XT720, one of the world's slimmest 8 Megapixel Android™ smartphones and the first to have a Xenon Flash.
This sleek (10.9mm), capacitive touch Android 2.1 phone also features a high definition (HD) video experience and enhanced media and mobile internet capabilities for users who expect the latest in technology and the ultimate smartphone experience.
Ralf Gerbershagen, vice president and general manager for Motorola's Mobile Devices business in Western Europe said, "MILESTONE XT720 is one of the most powerful phones in Motorola's current smartphone range. Slim, sophisticated and technically savvy, MILESTONE XT720 is a high performance device designed for those who are actively engaged in both their work and social lives.
"With MILESTONE XT720, Motorola has taken yet another step towards eliminating the barriers for consumers to creating and consuming media on the go."
Enhanced Digital Camera & Video
MILESTONE XT720 breaks new ground for Android smartphones by offering an 8 megapixel camera with Xenon flash, 10x digital zoom, and a 720p HD camcorder. It allows users to not only capture, view and share high quality photos and videos, but also helps make them look better than ever. Key features include:
• Smart image capture: includes easy panorama, face detection, multi-shot (six shots in a row), face filter, red eye reduction, camera shake prevention and more, to improve the image quality and variety
• High definition multimedia interface (HDMI™): HDMI cable (in box) allows HD video captured on the MILESTONE XT720 to be viewed directly on an HDTV
• Memory card support: 8GB microSD card included inbox; expandable up to 32GB
Designed For Mobile Internet
MILESTONE™ XT720 is designed to deliver high speed web-browsing and it has the capacity to support up to eight open browser windows. The huge 3.7 inch, WVGA (480X854) display shows full page websites, videos, games, or photos in glorious detail.
Taking full advantage of the power of Android 2.1, the display uses a powerful combination of Motorola's touch user interface (UI) and a capacitive touch sensor for smooth screen flipping and scrolling, and up to five customisable home screens.
A suite of Google™ mobile applications including Google Search™, Google Maps™, Gmail™ and YouTube™ are also integrated onto the device, as well as Motorola's MOTONAV turn by turn navigation1.
Advanced Mobile Office
MILESTONE XT720 supports management of multiple accounts and document editing to ensure efficiency and true multi-tasking on the go.
• Synchronise and manage multiple email accounts simultaneously, letting you separate your work and personal inboxes
• Gmail contacts sync: synchronise contacts from the accounts that are added on the device.
Apps Power
MILESTONE XT720 provides easy access to thousands of apps available on Android Market™ and has the processing power to ensure your favourites run swiftly and smoothly.
Availability
For more information about availability, please contact your local Motorola representative.
To learn more about the device visit YouTube™ or www.motorola.com/milestoneXT720. For more information and a full list of product specifications and features, please visit www.motorola.com/mediacenter.
Wow! The competition just arrived for the Nokia N8!
OMG, They should announced it tomorrow.
@JFH hmm N8 has 680 Mhz, this has 550Mhz, but with Android, it is most probably better.
@JFH ya know...a year ago this would have been groundbreaking, but with today's market, this thing is born obsolete.
@dementedacademic
It is not that simple.
First, the CPU in the N8 is ARM11, but underclocked at 680 Mhz. Could be increased through firmware. The CPU in this device is Cortex A8 which does more per cycle, so it may well be that the CPU in this device does more than the ARM 11 in N8 @ 680.
However, the real big difference here is the fact that the N8, which runs S^3 (not to be confused with the horrid S60 5th) is fully hardware accelerated. All UI effects etc go to the GPU, made by Broadcom (AFAIK) which is pretty strong according to benchmarks.
Anywho, why I mention this is that the N8 S^3 device uses the GPU extensively, whereas Anroid does not, and we cannot predict real world performance by just looking at the CPU, all that really matters is a snappy user experience and we will have to wait and see.
I do prefer the design and materials of the N8 though. And I also happen to like S^3 ( as far as I can tell ) over Android. Both my last points are subjective of course.
@jjasper123
Nope, the keyword here is XENON flash. That's a very big deal for people who take the camera in their phone seriously. Which is also the reason I compared it to the Nokia N8 which has Xenon flash as well, and not to other devices. Smart move by Motorola, even though I do not like the design at all.
@jjasper123
How is it obsolete? The only thing the evo has on this phone is screen size, and not everyone wants a huge phone. Besides this one looks better
@JFH Thanks for the info, appreciated.
@JFH
I must add that if this would have been a Nokia with the same design and specs would have been bashed by Engadget and US citizens.... God knows why?!
I consider this phone... boring.
@JFH
I haven't seen a xenon flash on a phone before... cool.
However, the appearance of the phone isn't aesthetically pleasing.
@dementedacademic
exactly. Engadget always hatin on motorola for no reason. I remember when there stock wad @ 3.00, all engadget did was post pictures of the moto logo with an upside down smile. This is going to sell. I wanna a good android camera
@Yoda
Xenon flash should be standard in every single high end phone.
@JFH
Thank you for the accurate and detailed info ... you beat me to it.
I personally would still go with the Milestone, the keyboard may be bad but its better than none and the GameGripper isn't selling for no reason.
@dementedacademic
I think you are wrong: if something Symbian does well (better than any other mobile OS) is to get the maximun from the available resources.
@JFH
not even close, the camera no match to nokia n8.
Motoroi, anyway I doubt too many will buy this.
@dementedacademic
New specs:
512 RAM and TI OMAP 3440 clocked to 720MHz
Check here
http://developer.motorola.com/products/milestonext720/
550MHz ???
@Michael Scrip The hell were they thinking? This isn't just a 'trading off some cycles for battery life', 550 MHz running Android will be SLOW.
@Pickaxe FYI, Droid has the same processor, and is not slow at all, it is the most sold android device to date.
@Michael Scrip android runs just fine at 550 Mhz ... as of now the snapdragon processors are more of a luxury than anything else ...
@Michael Scrip My Milestone is Overclocked to 1.2 Ghz, better than a Snapdragon's 1Ghz ;-)
@Kayalims
How Did you get an overclock on the milestone? link it please
What you all seem to be forgetting is that the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD had an A8 Cortex CPU that was clocked at 600MHz (ie better than the XT720's CPU) and it couldn't handle HD video, it lagged, it froze, it had to drop the framerate to try and cope.
The Sony Ericsson Vivaz, which handles HD video far better, runs an A8 CPU clocked at 720MHz.
Now both those handsets are/were running Symbian, which runs reasonably well on slower CPUs than Android, so stop and think again and ask yourself if the 550MHz CPU the XT720 will have will actually be up to the job because I personally doubt it.
@Step666
And what you do not seem to take into consideration is that the video can be encoded using a different process like using the GPU or with different commands meaning you can not show anything by CPU speed. The droid/milestone phones use a T.I. OMAP3 SoC which has proven to be much more powerful per clock cycle than the snapdragon or anything we have seen to date. Thats why overclocked droids are seeing better performance than 1ghz snapdragons
@Step666
Did you not see the video of it running Avatar on an HDTV?
You people lap up the marketing without using your brains. This has the same processor as the Droid, ie. 550 MHz OMAP 3430. Overclocked Droids at 1GHz are faster than Snapdragon equipped phones like the Nexus One.
@JXCGunrunna: I'm aware that GPUs can help with respect to video encoding and that the choice of encoder may also have an effect on how well the handset performs.
But it's still a valid point for concern. I mean, you don't imagine for one second do you that with either of the handsets I mentioned that the CPU isn't used to help with HD video encoding, do you?
Also, unless the XT720 has something other than a PowerVR SGX GPU (and so far there's not even confirmation it has that), then it's still going to be no more powerful than either the Vivaz or the i8910 HD and, once again, the difference between those two handsets and their handling of HD video recording does seem to be related to the speed of the CPU.
Also, @Shooter McGavin & JXCGunrunna: who said anything about Snapdragon?
I was comparing this A8-based, HD-recording handset to two other A8-based, HD-recording handsets.
I'm not for one second trying to say that the phone would necessarily perform better or worse if it had a Snapdragon CPU, merely that the stock speed of the CPU it ships with is a cause for concern.
Lastly, @Shooter McGavin: I'm pretty certain that when I posted that comment, the video of the TV showing Avatar hadn't been uploaded.
Certainly it's a promising sign but I still have my concerns.
I genuinely hope the handset does perform well, it ticks basically every box for me for a large Android touchscreen handset, perfect for complimenting the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini I've been looking at so far but I would definitely want to try one myself first.
@Shooter McGavin
Exactly. Vlad has done this twice in the last week and I am sure that this is what is adding to people thinking anything less than a 1ghz cpu is not fast enough. As of today, this is the second faster mainstream SoC out there and he acts like its old tech. It is still more than enough to run Android at a ridiculous speed.
Vlad did the same thing on the Flipout review. http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/03/motorola-flipout-preview/
"Running version 2.1 (Eclair) on a 600MHz processor (TI OMAP 3410) might seem like a recipe for trouble"
Maybe Engadget should get someone who knows what the hell they are talking about to talk about hardware. Is there something that magically made something that was fast 6 months ago not fast anymore. Is my 3.2 ghz core 2 quad with 12 mags of L2 cache not fast anymore because i7's exist?
Vlad, I asked you about that quote last time and did not get a response so maybe you can tell us whats up with the OMAP3 not being fast enough anymore.
BTW, that side chin thing actually makes it look like it would fit my hand better.
@Step666
I see what you mean but snapdragon is an A8 based SoC, which brings me to a point I and I think just about everyone else overlooks. We sit here and compare CPU speeds but what we should be comparing is SoC speeds because unlike our laptops and desktops, the speed is for the whole chip. The other big thing here is that comparing the Omnia HD, Nexus One, Droid and iPhone is that the architectures are all different. The memory controllers, IPS, DSP, GPU and other parts are all strung differently to the CPU.
I do worry about this too but I think as we have seen with the Droid, N900, Palm Pre and early benchmarks of the Droid xtreme that the OMAP3 is plenty capable of producing enough power to handle just about anything across the 3 different platforms its been used on.
@JXCGunrunna: of course, in an ideal world, it wouldn't be CPU clock speed but overall SoC performance that we could compare but the problem is it's pretty much impossible to produce meaningful figures for comparison.
@Step666
"Vlad, I asked you about that quote last time and did not get a response so maybe you can tell us whats up with the OMAP3 not being fast enough anymore...."
WHAT??? How dare you question the entelligence of an Engadget tech pundit? Don't you know that the Engadget writers are supposed to be the last word in tech? They are smarter than Nobel prize winners, physicists, technologists and even grad school professors.
You should think TWICE before asking them. Everybody and his dog knows that Engadget is the most "neutral" blog in the world.
Note: No, I am not a troll.
looks hot
Those are some nice specs, if only the processor was a little faster
Y so slO?
@SlimSpaceman actually the 550 mhz cortex a8 is more than fast enough to handle android. while it doesnt deliver snapdragon speeds, it does get better battery life. and its not so much the clock speed that matters, but the architecture of the core that indicates how snappy a phone will be.
@metaltorizo: but is it fast enough to handle HD video?
@Step666 or more importantly, can it run Crysis?
@metaltorizo
It's faster at 3D with a better GPU and it's faster if overclocked.
Another mediocre Android phone *sigh*
@klondikebar
what makes it mediocre? it has the same specs as the original moto droid which was state of the art just 6 months ago. i hardly think it is mediocre.
@CalBearGuy
btw i assume u were saying that about the processor... otherwise all the other features are pretty sweet.
@CalBearGuy
Poor codec support for one.
@CalBearGuy Six months ago is a while in smartphone years. Besides, I thought the Nexus was state of the art six months ago? In any case, every higher-end smartphone nowadays runs a Snapdragon, and in a few months we'll be seeing new ones at higher frequencies (and lower power consumption). If it had kept the keyboard, it would be seeing much less competition, but now it's up against the Evo 4G, the Droid Incredible/Nexus One, HTC Desire, Dell Streak... how will it compete with all those? Unless it has a good midrange price, I don't see it changing too many tech--savvy minds.
@gophergun
I think my point has been thoroughly proven.
@gophergun
If you are one of those tech savvy people this phone does not appeal to, you should no the Snapdragon actually is not all that great in comparison to 3430 or others. Sounds cool though, 1Ghz....
@JFH
*know
@JFH
You are spot on. 1ghz snapdragon is a wonderful marketing tool. kinda like AMD's high clock speeds and 6 cores. Great numbers but does not dictate performance. Their prices are awesome tho.
But it was supposed to come to t-mobile... Well at least we got the MyTouch...... *sobs uncontrollably*
Sounds like a mighty nice phone, albeit it's slow processor. Sadly, if a new iPhone is going to be announced today, it will outshine this one.
Another Craparola mobile which just happens to try and copy the iPhone OS, hell it even uses the slightly slower ARM Cortex A8 processor found in the iPhone 3GS - guess innovation is beaten by imitation.