This is why there is variety when it comes to smart phones, and even a single phone can come in a variety of flavors. This is the case with the Motorola Milestone. Many of you may remember this handset as one of the most elusive Android devices to ever be released. It was; the phone as first announced as the DROID in the US where it would be released exclusively under mobile carrier Verizon. It was not until a later announcement that the device would indeed be available in the UK and under a different name did Android fans finally get to rejoice.

One of the reasons why the Milestone was such an anticipated handset was that it bought together several important elements: the (then) new Android 2.0 Éclair, a slide out QWERTY keyboard and a big touch screen display. The 600MHz CPU is hardly anywhere near the Snapdragon chips used in today’s smart phones, but it did keep the price of the handset lower.

Now, Motorola is trying a new approach to the Milestone, dropping the keyboard and slimming down the handset. The new XT 720 Milestone smart phone is now a media based handset with an 8 mega pixel camera, 720p video recording and even an HDMI output port for video playback.

The new device moves away from the usual tech crowd to the more media centric Android fans. As fun as a full QWERTY keyboard can be, not all smart phone users are heavy typists; this makes the shift from typing to media playback a pretty good choice.