Oh dear, Andorid phone’s names will never pardon you. We thought Motorola was pretty happy calling the outside-US Droid 3 as Motorola 3 which appeared destined for China but somehow Moto has felt they needed yet another them to identify the Droid 3 with Bell in Canada — that why the Motorola XT860 4G (maybe Milestone 3 4G didn’t sound too good to big M’s execs). Whilst the name has changed, the specs and built of the phone remains ditto, but let’s revisit them.

Motorola XT860 specifications

  • Texas Instruments’ 1 GHz Dual-core OMAP 4430 processor — don’t expect it to  break any benchmark records. The Galaxy S 2’s dual-core Exynos chips at 1.2 GHz easily bests it.
  • Android 2.3 Gingerbread
  • 4.0 inch qHD display with res of 540 x 960 pixels
  • Full 5 row sliding physical QWERTY keyboard with dedicated row to numbers
  • 16 GB memory (plus card slot for additional up to 32 GB)
  • 8 Megapixel camera quite capable of shooting vids at 1080p (no front facing camera)
  • 4G (it’s in the name)
  • WiFi, 3G, GPS, etc.

Price

Expect the Motorola XT860 to be priced for $200 for a 2 year deal which is similar to what you pay and agree contract for on other high-end dual-core processor powered phones today.

Release Date

The launch date of Motorola XT860 isn’t available right now but it should be a matter of weeks or a couple of months at the max. Keep watching this space to remain updated.

Views/Review

Motorola XT860’s display isn’t a match for Galaxy S 2’s gorgeous Super AMOLED Plus display but qHD display is no slouch either and probably is only second to S2’s. Same for processor, too. Other specs are cool and battery life of the phone should be good enough to get you easily throughout the day without saying hello to a charging point. But that is until and unless you install battery-hungry apps from the android market that keep running in the background eating up not only the working memory which causes slowdowns but also drinks away the battery juice — all in vain when you never required such an app in the first place. So, be careful with such background-sport-loving apps in the android market on any android phone.

Should you BUY it?

The Motorola XT860 is the best full QWERTY keyboard supported phone thanks partly to its dual-core chips, but mainly to the non-availability of good options from other manufacturers. If you’re a fan of physical keyboards, you shouldn’t look anywhere else than Motorola XT860/Droid 3/Milestone 3 whichever is available near you or is expected to be available. And it looks pretty cool too even though the design is nearly 2 years old now after it appeared in Droid 1 in Nov 2009 — but it still looks better than many android phones and anyway the best looking phone with qwerty keyboard.

Via PocketNow