Droid hits European Milestone

The Motorola Droid, unveiled last week as the first Android-powered handset to use the version 2.0 firmware, is on its way to Europe under the guise of the Motorola Milestone.

Italy and Germany will be the first markets in Europe to stock the Milestone, with further availability to be announced at a later date.  It is believed T-Mobile, Vodafone and O2 will launch the device in Germany, while Italian carriers are not yet confirmed.

In a slider form factor with a full QWERTY keyboard, the Droid/Milestone boasts a 3.7” high-resolution capacitive touchscreen, with a width of 854 pixels and more than 400,000 pixels in total. The camera weighs in at five megapixels, with a dual-LED flash and video capture, backed up by 16GB of removable storage.

Connectivity is provided by 3G, wifi and Bluetooth as well as A-GPS, while the operating system is Android 2.0, supporting multitasking for six apps, and access to more than 12,000 applications via the Android app store. Droid is also the first device to support Google Maps Navigation (Beta), which provides turn-by-turn voice guidance as a free feature of Google Maps and can also be voice controlled.

But perhaps the most advantageous thing Droid has got going for it is a Webkit HTML5, Flash 10 ready browser, and an ARM Cortex A8 processor, making it roughly twice as fast as existing Android handsets.