Motorola Milestone’s Russian keyboard “nearly impossible to use”?

Ilinca Nita  By on 16 Mar 10

Motorola has recently launched its Milestone Android smartphone in Russia, obviously hoping to sell as many units as possible there (Russia is one of the world’s largest mobile markets).

However, the Russian Milestone has a problem that, reportedly, makes customers cancel their pre-orders.

It seems that Motorola had a hard time fitting all the letters in the Russian alphabet on the Milestone’s QWERTY keyboard.

This is what the Russian QWERTY keyboard of the Moto Milestone looks like (photo via Mobile-review):

Motorola Milestone QWERTY keyboard Russian problem

Some letters have been paired on single keys (because the Russian alphabet has slightly more letters than the English one), but that’s not so much of a problem. The real problem is that, as a Milestone user reports, Motorola made a “significant mistake” by changing the location of Russian letters Ze and E (which look almost the same but are totally different), and by not including a comma in the Russian layout – the comma is “a very important part of the Russian language” and you have to change the layout to English when you need to use it.

Apparently, these mistakes make the Milestone’s Russian keyboard “nearly impossible to use.”

Naturally, users are asking Motorola to replace the faulty keyboard, because “the only way for Motorola to stay successful on the Russian market with their Milestone is to make an urgent announcement that all the buggy keyboards will be replaced for free and all the next Milestone shipments will have those bugs already corrected.”

Well, I hope Motorola will eventually do something about all this.

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  • Zaphod Beeblebrox

    I would drop “nearly” from your “nearly impossible to use” statement… I'm Russian, and I'm still seriously considering Milestone — but a European version (or an altogether different brand/model; e.g. Mexus One). Russian edition of the Milestone is not an option anymore.

    What Motorola did to Milestone's keyboard can be summarized as this:
    1. Pairied letters is an oversight.
    2. Exchanging “Ze” and “E” is an insult (not just me, but many Russians feel like that).
    3. Missing comma… well… one must be brain damaged to do something like that.

    “Problem” for me, personally, is that Motorola Milestone is head and sholders above other Android smartphones, or else I would forget about Motorola brand altogether and never looked back.

  • Zaphod Beeblebrox

    Erratum: hit “M” instead of “N”, and here we go: “Mexus”…

    No keyboard is perfect, obviously. :-)

  • derloos

    Well… Confusing “Ze” and “E” can be a common mistake for low-end Chinese makers, but for Motorola. What's worse, according to my info they aren't going to replace keyboard 'cause the size of Russian market's “negligible” for them.

  • Denis

    Actually Motorola hadn't launched Milestone in Russia yet and this another scandal, they promised to release it since January, than delay to February, to March and now to April. Russian users who managed to see pictures of local keyboard layout were pretty surprised. Obviously it is fuck up, but Motorola instead of apology just said “what is done is done, may be we will change it in the future models”.

  • Denis

    Actually Motorola hadn't launched Milestone in Russia yet and this another scandal, they promised to release it since January, than delay to February, to March and now to April. Russian users who managed to see pictures of local keyboard layout were pretty surprised. Obviously it is fuck up, but Motorola instead of apology just said “what is done is done, may be we will change it in the future models”.

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