Android Showdown: Legend, Milestone or Desire?

These are our 3 top picks for best Android smartphones.

Not want an iPhone? Looking for something more fun than a Blackberry? Hmmm, we hear these Android phones are quite good!

But they are coming out like crazy these days, HTC are spitting them out so fast its making our heads spin, Samsung has one, Motorola has one, heck even Google has their own – so which one is the best one?

If you’re shopping right now you can’t go wrong with one of these 3 Android smartphones. These represent the best on the market right now if you aren’t an Apple fan and are underwhelmed by Windows Mobile – then these are your best options:

HTC Legend

From their crop of Androids, HTC released their first Android 2.1 device with Sense UI, the HTC Legend. Though it only has a 3.2-inch screen, it has a far more superior AMOLED display rather than usual HVGA. Like the HTC Desire, the Legend has an optical trackpad for navigation. There’s a 5-megapixel camera too, with a much-welcomed addition of a flash.

Running on Qualcomm’s 600MHz MSM7227 underneath the hood, several HTC Sense enhancements have been weaved in such as a ‘FriendStream’ which rips info from Twitter, Facebook, and displays them in one feed. Google Maps 3.1.2 is also integrated, and the broad improvements to the browser and email client will also please business users. Weighing in at 126 grams, the device holds in an internal GPS antenna, an FM radio and supports various music formats.

See Janice Man launch this phone in Hong Kong here.

• Price: HK$4,198

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Motorola Milestone

For quite some time Motorola has been quiet, but now they’re striking back. Proving they still have what it takes to compete in the battle of cellphones, Motorola released the Milestone, the first smartphone powered by the latest Android 2.1. With a 3.7-inch multi-touch screen, this slider phone has a resolution of 480×854 pixels. Weighing in at 165 grams, the Motorola Milestone packs in a suite of Google mobile applications for easy access to Google Search, Google Mail and YouTube. Though it comes bundled with an 8GB memory card, there is no installation software. Once plugged in a PC, the device shows up in the device manager ready to receive movies, music and photos the user wants to feed it with. The Motorola Milestone features an accelerometer, proximity and ambient light sensors, a micro-USB port, push e-mail support, A-GPS and Motonav, a GPS navigation app with turn-by-turn voice guidance.

And as we posted last week, a new model was just released with Chinese input.

• Price: HK$3,980

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HTC Desire

While we haven’t actually played with this one, the “Nexus Two” is shipping very, very soon – so if you can hold out you might want to have a look at this before putting your money down.

Whereas the Nexus One is Google’s baby, the Desire is HTC’s, and they’ve brought their best stuff to the table. It’s essentially the Nexus One reflavored to HTC’s liking. With a stunning 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, the Desire runs Android 2.1 OS under its slimline candybar form. It’s got an optical trackpad, instead of the tradtitional trackball found on the Nexus One, a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash and the undeniably attractive Sense interface. HTC’s Sense UI is fast and fluid and is certainly one of the more attractive customizations out there. It also adds extra social networking integration; and HTC arguably have some of the best mini-apps for homescreen use.

The Desire will support Exchange mail, contacts and calendar out of the box, and HTC have apparently been finessing their various apps to improve the experience over earlier versions of Sense. Like the Legend, you’ll also get the Flash Lite plugi, which definitely performs better on the Desire thanks to the faster 1GHz Snapdragon processor.

We’ll cover this when it’s officially launched in Hong Kong – but we are expecting great things from the Desire.

• Price: TBD

The main image for this story came from a site that sells Android logo stickers and some of them are quite hilarious so have a look if you are in the mood for some Android stickers at the appropriately titled: Androidstickers.com