Motorola rolls out its first Android phone in India

Motorola India launched its first Android phone in the country. Powered by Android 2.1, Milestone enables usage of multiple applications at a time as well as a hi-resolution pinch and zoom display. Priced at Rs 32,990, the handset comes with a five megapixel camera and an 8 GB memory card.
A suite of Google mobile applications including Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail and YouTube are integrated into the device. Users also have access to thousands of apps and widgets from Google’s Android store Android Market, as well as unified Google, Microsoft Office and Facebook contacts.
Faisal Siddiqui, country head, mobile devices, Motorola India, said in a statement, “Milestone is targeted at the well informed, socially connected individual. As an Android 2.1 device, Milestone does what other smart phones don’t. It was designed to enhance consumer experiences with its full screen web browsing experience, ability to juggle between multiple apps and suite of Google applications.”
Milestone comes preloaded with voice based street level navigable maps of 401 cities in India. The navigation service works independent of mobile network and can be used without inserting the SIM card as the maps are loaded on the handset.
Android is a software platform designed to deliver a customisable user experience on mobile devices. Other than the web browsing capability, it enables interactive web services such as email, social networking, mobile games and video sharing.
The Google Android mobile operating system (OS) was first launched in October 2008 with the HTC Dream handset. India got Android in July 2009 with the launch of HTC Magic. The Android OS has become widely popular especially owing to the fact that it is an open source platform which means that the program’s code is freely available and any developer can create applications to run on it, without having to take permission or licenses.
Currently, HTC, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and now Motorola sell Android based phones in India.