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Motorola Milestone 2 announced for the UK: Tethering goodness and Android 2.2

Motorola has announced the follow-up to the Motorola Milestone, imaginatively named Milestone 2. It’s Motorola’s UK-based “more functional sister product” to its own Motorola Droid 2 which was announced in the US some time ago. Running Android 2.2 (Froyo), the Milestone 2 also brings back Motoblur, which was conspicuous in its absence from the Motorola Milestone XT720.

Motoblur, in case we’ve all forgotten (and we had), is Motorola’s bespoke system for amalgamating social networking, messaging, contacts and email accounts into one big widgety internet-flavoured soup.

Spec-wise, the Milestone 2 is pretty standard fare for a smartphone these days, with a 1GHz processor under the hood along with 8GB of on-board memory with a microSD slot for expansion. The camera is 5.0MP, so no megapixel-based improvement on the original Milestone’s snapper. However, like its Milestone XT720 pal (and the iPhone 4, HTC Desire, Sony Ericsson Vivaz et al), the Milestone 2 will allow 720p HD video recording.

The Qwerty slider is a touch slimmer than its predecessors, and lacks the unfinished feel of its more recent sibling the Motorola Milestone XT720.

It’s not all just more of the same though; the Milestone 2 can tether up to five devices to act as you own mobile wifi hotspot, although it will depend on your network which may choose to charge you extra for this functionality. And because the handset is running Android 2.2, the Milestone 2’s WebKit browser has Flash functionality (10.1). Motorola has also re-jigged the Qwerty keyboard, losing the stand-alone D-pad and incorporating cursors instead, as well as re-spacing the keys.

What with the original Milestone, Milestone XT720 and now the Milestone 2, it’s getting crowded in the Milestone line-up, and honestly we don’t see much between them – but with more under the hood we’re hoping that our full review will reveal more goodies.

The Milestone 2 will be out in Q4, so any time from the start of October onwards. Although Moto is “in discussion” with networks, there’s no word yet on whethethe Milestone 2 will enjoy a network tie-in; and there’s no word of price-point yet either.

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