The downside. Am I correct?

[tehpriest]

Reading around it seems that the Milstone cannot play protected music, video or ringtones. iTunes Plus music, tunes ripped from your own CDs, home movies you shoot with your video camera, and video digitized from DVD, does not have Google navigation (will it ever get this?), cannot be sync'd direct to Outlook and will not mirror Outlook emails (as per the E90). Also just to change the theme I would have to void the warrentee by Rooting it.

So what is the point of me buying one? I must admit I was very excited but now I am very very disappointed.

Please tell me I am wrong.

 

[big_adventure]

Reading around it seems that the Milstone cannot play protected music, video or ringtones. iTunes Plus music, tunes ripped from your own CDs, home movies you shoot with your video camera, and video digitized from DVD, does not have Google navigation (will it ever get this?), cannot be sync'd direct to Outlook and will not mirror Outlook emails (as per the E90). Also just to change the theme I would have to void the warrentee by Rooting it.

So what is the point of me buying one? I must admit I was very excited but now I am very very disappointed.

Please tell me I am wrong.

You are very, very wrong.

It will happily play iTunes Plus songs (which are AAC, non-DRM - I have about 2 gigs of them that I listen to all the time), tunes ripped from CDs (in at least MP3, Ogg or AAC formats), it has Google navigation if you install it, it will play any non-DRM movies (I play stuff ripped from DVDs, stuff downloaded from the internet, stuff recorded by camcorders, you name it) you want as long as they are in supported formats (it won't easily play avi container files, so you need to save the save the files in m4v or whatever - you can use lots of free tools to convert, and you'd have to do the same thing with more other phones), etc. You can make any song you want into a ringtone, much more easily that you can for many other phones. You can buy and install ringtones from the market, so...

Whether rooting it voids your warranty or not is a question of how stupid you are. Rooting ONLY installs two tiny files onto the phone, and then sets the suid bit on one of them. That's it. It is completely non-destructive. If you need warranty service, just take off the files, and you are unrooted. Boom. Even easier, for the truly lazy, you can just flash the phone with a non-rooted, stock nandroid backup or SBF image and give the phone back in that condition (neither of those options takes more than 10 minutes).

It has some level of Exchange support, though I don't use it so I don't know how good it is.

You might want to try "reading around" a little more.

Protected video might give you trouble - specifically, video downloaded from the iTunes store, but there is no phone on the market that will play that stuff, except for phones (or other devices) with little munched-on apples on the backs of them. I don't use Windows, so I don't use Windows Media protected files.

 

[tehpriest]

That does sound a bit more promising. This is the thread and Youtube video I followed Re Google Maps.
http://www.droidforums.net/forum/motorola-milestone/4743-confirmed-google-maps-milestone-working.html
The link goes to a web page that says.
"The reduced functionality is as follows:
*No street name at the top
*No arrow indicating next turn direction
*Voice guidance is delayed, if at all present"

And the other info came from a Sync App site. http://www.markspace.com/products/android/missing-sync-android.html

It is at the bottom in the * Info

Do you know if that app actually works BTW ?

 

[big_adventure]

That does sound a bit more promising. This is the thread and Youtube video I followed Re Google Maps.
http://www.droidforums.net/forum/motorola-milestone/4743-confirmed-google-maps-milestone-working.html
The link goes to a web page that says.
"The reduced functionality is as follows:
*No street name at the top
*No arrow indicating next turn direction
*Voice guidance is delayed, if at all present"

And the other info came from a Sync App site. http://www.markspace.com/products/android/missing-sync-android.html

It is at the bottom in the * Info

Do you know if that app actually works BTW ?

I've never tried Missing Sync, but people swear by it. However, you do have to remember that they are getting paid to convince you that you need their software.

I use Google Navigation - the part about the street name is true, but this is because Google just hasn't built that support into their international maps yet (hence, no release...). I see the arrows that show me exactly where to go, you can tap the screen for Street View with the path to follow if you want it, and the voice always works, though it definitely isn't the earliest I've heard, and soemtimes it does cut it pretty close. No phone will do as perfect a job as a good standalone, but the advantage is that Google will make it better, faster. Oh, and the price cannot be beat.