Motorola Launches Milestone 2 In UK

Motorola’s Milestone 2 smartphone, also known as the Droid 2 in the US, has launched in the UK, selling at a contract-free price of £379.99.

The phone is designed to appeal to enterprise users, with a slide-out qwerty keyboard, a 5 Megapixel camera and a 3.7-inch touchscreen. It has a 1GHz processor and runs Google’s Android 2.2 operating system.

Early reviews from the US claimed that the Droid 2 was an improvement on its successful predecessor, which launched in the UK this time last year. The new device offers push email, Gmail and corporate sync support with Exchange 2003 and 2007, as well as calendar and contacts functionality and a host of other Google mobile services.

There has been some suggestion that the ‘antennagate’ issue which dogged the arrival of the Apple iPhone 4 could be also be affecting some Motorola Droid 2 smartphones in the US. However, reports of connectivity issues seem to have petered out since the phone launched there on 12 August.

Gadgets for Cyber Monday

The news comes as Britain prepares for its busiest online shopping day of the year. A survey by the  National Retail Federation estimates that more than 106 million consumers will shop online today – a day known as “Cyber Monday”.

With Christmas now just a few weeks away, Motorola’s Milestone 2 could make it into a few stockings, though it faces tough competition in the smartphone market from Apple’s iPhone 4 and various handsets from the likes of HTC, Samsung and Research in Motion.

Meanwhile, Google’s latest update to its Android operating system, code-named Gingerbread, is in the pipeline and already being rolled out on selected handsets. Android 2.3 will reportedly feature an overhaul of Android’s icons and user interface, as well as support for video chat and SIP (session initiation protocols), enabling users to receive calls through Google Voice over a Wi-Fi connection.