The Nokia N8 and Motorola are two smartphones that are very different in certain aspects. One major difference between the two phones is the presence of a QWERTY keyboard in the Milestone but not in the N8. A physical keyboard provides tactile feedback and makes it faster and easier to type long messages on the phone. The keyboard is hidden beneath the rear half of the Milestone and slides to the right to be used in landscape mode. The N8 has a solid candybar construction and there are no moving parts.

Another major difference is their operating system as the N8 uses the new Symbian^3 OS while the Milestone uses Android 1.6. The Symbian^3 OS is fairly new but seems to have everything in check. On the other hand, Android seems to be progressing quite nicely with version 2.2 (Froyo) but the Milestone looks left-out as Motorola as not released an upgrade for the Milestone.

With the hardware, the Milestone has the bigger screen between the two by just .2 of an inch. Although the N8 has the smaller screen, it gains points for having an AMOLED display, which is better at contrast and color reproduction than standard LCD displays. There is a wide gap between the amounts of memory that both phones have. The N8 is equipped with 16GB of internal memory for users to store files. In contrast, the Milestone only has 75MB; not barely enough to hold an entire music album, much less anything else. The Milestone ships with an 8GB microSD card but if you want more, you need to replace the card with one that has a bigger capacity. You can also add a microSD card to the N8 and it will add to the 16GB already inside the phone.

The major draw for the N8 is its far superior camera with its 12 megapixel sensor. The Carl Zeiss lens added to the autofocus feature can take photos that rival shots from many of the digital cameras available today. The Milestone has a more modest 5 megapixel sensor that is par for most smartphones. Its major downside is its inability to record 720p video. Although, this problem is probably a limitation of the Android OS, it still remains to be seen after the release of Froyo for the Milestone sometime in 2011.

Summary:

1. The Milestone has a QWERTY keyboard while the N8 does not
2. The N8 runs on Symbian^3 while the Milestone runs on Android
3. The N8 display is smaller but better than the Milestone’s display
4. The N8 has a lot more memory than the Milestone
5. The N8 has a better camera than the Milestone