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When Motorola was talking up its Android range - the basis of its hoped-for 2010 turnaround in handsets - it seemed well set to make a splash in the US, where its brand and carrier partnerships remain strong despite its recent troubles. But penetration of Europe was far less assured - Motorola has always been overshadowed there by Nokia and Sony Ericsson, and has virtually pulled out of the region during 2009 as part of its streamlining process. But with it could not afford to ignore the booming mobile web trends of Europe, and it has surprised us by getting carrier support in the first phase of its new handsets, Cliq/Dext and Droid.

The Cliq, called Dext in Europe, actually shipped at Orange earlier than it reached its launch carrier, T-Mobile USA. Now the Droid, in a GSM/HSPA version called Milestone, should get to its first European territory in parallel with its US debut at Verizon Wireless - reportedly hitting O2 Germany on November 9, well in time for the holiday buying season. The phone will come to other German operators - Vodafone and possibly T-Mobile - shortly afterwards, and to Italy by year end, and probably the UK early in 2010 (O2 UK says it has no current plans to support the handset, but may well change its mind if its German stablemate has a good experience, especially as the UK arm looks to compensate for the loss of its iPhone exclusive).

Motorola is clearly going for volume rather than a high profile exclusive, in a bid to boost its tiny market share and reassert its brand, though this strategy, of course, comes with a trade-off in terms of share of carriers' marketing budgets. The Milestone will be a GSM version of Verizon's CDMA product. As the first Android phone to combine release 2.0 of the operating system and an ARM A8 processor (included in the latest version of Texas Instruments' OMAP), it has superfast credentials, though these will be less stand-out in Europe where there is already a group of even faster gigahertz devices from firms like Samsung and Toshiba. However, these speedy phone/MID hybrids mainly run Windows Mobile or proprietary OS, and have yet to be adapted for Android.

The specs of Milestone will be pretty much identical to those of Droid apart from the radio and bands - slider with full Qwerty keyboard; 3.7-inch high resolution capacitive touchscreen with more than 400,000 pixels in total; 5-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash and video capture; 16Gb of microSD storage; and the fast new browser, supporting all the key new web technologies like WebKit HTML 5 and Adobe Flash 10.

Connectivity comes via HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and A-GPS and there is multitasking for up to six applications and, of course, access to the growing Android Marketplace, which now boasts 12,000 apps, the largest after Apple's App Store.

There may be less consistency about how operators support applications. Tight integration of Google services from the homescreen is a Verizon strategy for open mobile web, but its European counterparts are more divided on whether to showcase third party brands or push their own. Vodafone has pioneered a two-layered approach, offering branded smartphones with their own software platforms alongside launching its own-brand Vodafone 360 offering. It is likely to pursue this approach with Milestone, supporting the new Google Maps Navigation and Motorola's own Motonav, and other key apps like Google Voice. The Motorola Milestone site stresses that these apps are network dependent and subject to carrier support, and it seems O2 will be less keen to give them a homescreen position.

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