Most people will recognize this as the Motorola that Verizon will carry in the US.  But on the other side of the Atlantic, people will know this as the Motorola Milestone.  Either version is Motorola’s first GSM phone running on the latest Google Android 2. 0 Éclair operating system. At least that’s what it will be once it gets released in Europe this December starting with Italy and Germany.  The O2 German site has it priced at a SIM-free €481 but rumour has it that it will be closer to €400-€450 once released.   The sales kit is expected to come with an 8GB microSD card, 16GB in the US. Droid – Milestone Differences While sharing the same hardware and design, there are some differences between the US Droid and the European Milestone versions.  The former gets the latest Google Maps and has its multitouch feature on its capacitive touchscreen turned off while the latter has the Motorola MOTONAV GPS application that does the same spoken turn-by-turn GPS guidance and sports a multitouch capacitive touchscreen similar to what the iPhone 3Gs has. In fact, were it not for the difference in form factor, the Motorola Milestone/Droid is the closest if not the best rival the iPhone could have had. The new Android 2. 0 seems to even up the functionality score with what the iPhone can do.  While it’s heftier due to the real glass on the show and an all-metal body at 165g over the iPhone’s 139g, size-wise, they’re quite similar when the Milestone’s QWERTY slider is closed. Fantastic Value High end Features. Its feature set can easily dislodge many flagship smartphones in the market.  It sports a massive 3. 7” wide-VGA capacitive touchscreen with multitouch (for Europe) and a brilliant show that puts to shame the AMOLED show on the Samsung i8910 HD. You can pretty much do on its screen what you can do on the iPhone: double tap to zoom in or out as well as pin or squeeze your fingers to zoom Web pages, photos and maps and spread out to zoom out.  There’s no other mobile phone other than the iPhone that can do that at this time. Another outstanding feature comes from its imaging function.  It has a 5-megapixel autofocus camera with dual LED flash that also supports wide-VGA recording at 24 fps frame rates. The new Android OS now has flash support where before, mobile phones running Android didn’t have any flash on their cameras. And of course, it’s a quad band GSM and twin band UMTS phone with HSPA data connectivity for a no-wait surfing and downloading on the net.  WiFi and Bluetooth 2. 1 with EDR are there for wireless data connectivity. Its CPU is the ARM Cortex A8 clocked at 550 MHz and is touted to be as powerful as the one used by the iPhone 3Gs. Battery life is 6. 5 hours talk time and 14 days standby time from its 1400 mAh lithium-ion battery – typical of most other flagship handsets.  There’s the usual coteries of hardware features you can expect from a top act smartphone – 3. 5mm headphone jack, microUSB support, microSD slot for up to 32GB, stereo Fm radio with RDS, GPS, accelerometers and capable multimedia players. High Marks All Around At its price point, nothing comes close to the Milestone.  In terms of value for the money, no flagship mobile phones can hold a candle to it.  Motorola may have indeed made a defining milestone in its phone-making history with this.  At the very least, it has redefined what a high value high performing flagship smartphone is.  It comes right in time to update the Christmas shopping list.  And there’s no Nokia or HTC on it, just a Motorola Milestone.