… how gay is that?

Remember my previous article about the Motorola Droid? Well, back then I already thought that name was questionable as it comes around a bit cheesy – especially when the device is running Android on there. It is kind of like calling a BlackBerry weather app “BBWeather”. But “Milestone”? Come on Motorola … you are a US company and US companies usually put shit loads of money into branding and marketing of products. If feels like they are cutting costs and try to save money on that front. Then a clever manager dude came along and named the phone “Milestone” because it will be the next big milestone for Motorola to get back on the profit making track.

That might be understandable, but then that question comes up: Why do you use that name just for Germany? Because lots of Germans don’t speak that well? Indeed … we they even call a cell phone “Handy”. Back to our topic. “Milestone” is not such of a common name in Germany that people would recognize it better than “Droid”. Some naming decisions are really funny.

Perhaps some readers from Motorola can shed some light in here

Website: Motorola Milestone

P.S.: Sorry for the expression at the top. No offense my gay friends – I like you too. It is just not my thing

Motorola is releasing this beaty very soon! Somehow it reminds me very much of the Google G1. A bit sharper edges and stuff but that seems to be “in” right now. Therefore, most specs are the same with one highlight: the screen resolution will be 854 x 480 pixels. That sounds pretty nice to me! Moreover, Motorola put a capacitive 3.7 inch display in there which means the display definitely supports multi-touch. Micro-SD, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, 5 MP auto-focus camera with double-flash.

The US CDMA model will be available for $200 with a 2-year contract on Verizon. Check out the Droid does website.

By the way, I found that note on Golem.

Motorola is one of the largest mobile phone makes in the world. With the RAZR phone Motorola had a huge success some years back, but these times are over. The mobile phone giant is struggling and needs to compete with other phone vendors like Apple, RIM, and Nokia. The Motorola platform was never really good. They used Symbian sometimes as well their own Motorola OS and Windows Mobile. Still today the variety of phones and software platforms of Motorola is quite fragmented.

With the announcement some while that Motorola will develop Android powered devices, a step in the right direction was done. The OS is free, open and provides basically all features a modern smartphone needs. It seems they are really going forward with this as I just read on golem that Motorola is due to release a new Android phone at September 10th.

Moreover, the MOTODEV – Motorola Development Center – lists the MOTODEV Studio for Android for download. The studio is based on Eclipse and seems to be some kind of an Eclipse plugin – so it will be easy to use for most developers as everyone has Eclipse anyway, right?

Everyone who is interested, check out the MOTODEV Studio for Android here: http://developer.motorola.com/

I just read this article on the Financial Times site of the FT Techblog:

Tech blog (Richard Waters): I have to confess: Google’s mobile phone platform is getting off to a much better start than I had expected.

The generally favourable reviews of the first Android phone, the G1 made by HTC for T-Mobile, showed how well Google had done from a standing start in just a year and half.

Now comes news that Motorola is about to throw its lot in with Android, using the Google software for its consumer smart-phones. Given Motorola’s slumping market share, it certainly makes sense to consolidate on three platforms.

It’s too early to declare Android a winner, though. Google still has to persuade mobile phone companies that it is friend rather than foe. The T-Mobile device works best as a delivery mechanism for Google’s own services. How many operators are ready to throw their lot in with Google to that degree?
Full text: www.ft.com/techblog

IMHO, Motorola announcing to take a deeper look to the Android platform and supporting it is a quite huge step forward for Android. Not so long ago Motorola was the second largest cell phone maker in the world and it was about to push Nokia from its throne as the world’s larget manufaturer. But since the amazing Motorola RAZR they didn’t do anything special in the market and their products just didn’t have any flair. I still have my Nokia shares in my depot and not Motorola. Nokia is still one step ahead and they have a more innovative flair.

However, I think Google and Android will kick off soon. There just need to be more devices available, more users, more developers and more interest in the platform. Until now Google did a lot of good things and making the platform and free of charge means that manufacturers can build phones with the OS without paying for the OS. This is a huge advantage in point of saving per product costs in the first place. Furthermore, they have the freedom to customize the OS to their needs (say manufacturer / carrier branding, etc.).

Regarding 3rd party applications (that is our field guys!) developers just love open source software. From my point of view not that much that it is mostly available free of charge but it provides the possibility to look into the original source code and get a clue how the heck Google made this or that. I don’t consider this stealing of code. It is just a hint to crash my mental blockade which I guess everyone of you might have experienced some time ago.

Anyhoo, it is getting more and more interesting by every day that passes by. Share your thoughts – share your code – just if you want to, of course!

What do you think about that?