MOTOROLA DEVOUR REVIEW

At first glance, it’s hard to know what to make of the Motorola Devour. It’s either weirdly appealing or disgustingly ugly, we haven’t quite decided yet and I doubt we ever will.

Devour looks somewhat similar to the Milestone in its angular design and protruding lip - on both ends with the Devour though. However, its white aluminium exterior makes this Motorola look a bit like a Stormtrooper from Star Wars (though it also comes in Darth Vader black if that's more your thing).

Aesthetics aside, it appears Motorola are dedicated to the task of clawing their way back from mobile manufacturer oblivion and they’ve chosen some ambitious projects. The Milestone certainly got a lot of positive attention and the Devour looks a similar, albeit lesser, animal.
The Devour has a full QWERTY keyboard that slides out and I’m very pleased to say it has omitted the terrible D-pad that has haunted the Milestone. Instead, it has a touch navigation pad below the screen itself which is more straight forward to use.

This comes with Motoblur, so Twitter, email and news can be viewed from the homescreen (are you listening to this Apple?). There are 5 homescreens which can be customised at will, but the overly-sensitive touch response sometimes makes dragging and dropping icons very difficult.

The slide-out full keyboard appears to be something of a mixed bag, because while the feature has become increasingly popular and ever-growing numbers of people require them, it’s still rare to find a good one. The Milestone suffered with an awkward layout, and the Devour has made the keys flush with the base which makes typing troublesome again.
The Devour phone packs a 3MP camera which, as you’d expect, isn’t all that great (most smartphones can manage 5 megapixel cameras these days, can't they?).

Response to this phone will vary, some will adore it while others acknowledge that it is sorely lacking or ill-designed in places – much like the Milestone. That being said, this is a budget smartphone so it would be ridiculous to expect it to be perfect; it’s actually a very good device for the price.

QUICK-FIRE FEATURES
Display: 3.1” TFT touchscreen
Weight: 180g
Dimensions: 61.0 x 115.5 x 15.4 mm
Camera: 3.2MP with continuous digital zoom, geo-tagging and photo editing
Video: 23 fps
Music player: AAC, AMR, H.263, H.264, MP3, MPEG-4, WAV, WMA, WMV, MIDI, AAC+
Operating system: Android 1.6
Memory: 8GB microSD pre-installed, capacity up to 32GB
Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.1, uSB 2.0, MicroUSB
Internet: Wifi, 3G

by Rich White