First impressions – Motorola Milestone XT720

Last week we had a pre-launch play with the new Motorola Milestone XT720, Moto’s new flagship handset.

We started with the 8MP camera, one of the phone's best brags. It seemed fast with accurate autofocus. The cool album software is exclusive to Motorola, with thumbnails that float above a blurry background made up from the pics on screen.

A proprietary HDMI output sits under one of those annoying flaps on the top. Thankfully, the adapter cable to connect to a full-size HDMI port on your telly comes as standard.

The silvery 3.7in touchscreen was very smeary – following the iPad trend to drive the market in screen-cleaning supplies, perhaps? In its defence, when it is clean, it's very clear and the (480x854) resolution is excellent.

It was a little unresponsive, as were the touch-sensitive buttons below. And that's not a massive surprise, since Motorola has only seen fit to put a 550MHz processor at the phone's core.

We were told this “may be the thinnest Android phone” and it certainly seemed sleek, although the squared edges made it feel chunkier than a Google Nexus One or HTC Desire. Of course, the new-found thinness comes at the expense of the original Milestone’s qwerty keypad.

Look out for a full review soon on Stuff.tv