Because Rico shot this phone while we were dining at Soms tonight, I promised to have my short feature of the HTC Magic up before the morrow so that he could link back to my “scoop.” Before anything else, let me list the pricing scheme of the device which is available exclusively through SMART. The unit alone is quite expensive for a device that uses the Android platform at 39,900.00 (shouldn’t open source not have heavy licensing fees?).
With a plan, the costs will look like this:
New Line Application
Plan 500 – P27,000
Plan 800 – P24,000
Plan 1200 – P20,000
Plan 1800 – P15,000
Plan 2500 – P9,500
Plan 3500 – P3,000
Retention Plan Renewal
Plan 500 – P26,500
Plan 800 – P23,500
Plan 1200 – P19,800
Plan 1800 – P14,800
Plan 2500 – P9,300
Plan 3500 – P2,900
As you can see, there’s not much difference in terms of pricing whether you’re on retention or applying for a new line.
If you want a walk through of the Android OS, check out my first post with the T-Mobile G1 last year:
The UI philosophy behind the G1 is very different from the iPod touch / iPhone as the former is limited to three side scrolls and a taskbar which you can pull up at any time. The three menus contain apps, displayable widgets (like Google Chrome, you can convert apps into shortcuts or widgets onto the main menu), and a search bar. The taskbar displays all the apps you’ve installed. Widgets can be dragged around the screen by simply pressing and holding and then dragging them around.
Nokia E71, HTC Magic, LG Arena
The HTC Magic is like a smooth bar of soap. Despite the plastic surface, the Magic looks very elegant and light to the touch with a small protrusion at the bottom of the phone similar to the Palm Pre’s design. The front buttons serve four functions — home, menu bar, back, and a dedicated search button. You also have your trackball, and two call buttons (one of which is also the power and sleep button).
Hands down, we’re seeing an improved version of the Android OS on the Magic. If Google keeps this up, we’re bound to see an OS in between Apple’s iPhone and Windows Mobile. The biggest strength of the Android OS, IMHO, is its integration with Google Apps. Right now I haven’t had the time to really configure the phone to work with Maps, GMail, GCal, and the like (not present — yet. Eek). I also noticed that the app marketplace wasn’t activated. I guess this is something that is launched in waves via a software update, hence this may be SMART’s responsibility. *shrug* Well, let’s see…
Nonetheless, the HTC Magic is a piece of beauty. It has a pretty fast user interface and minimal buttons. The scroll wheel is an added boon for browsing the Internet, but I found myself using it less and less when I got the hang of using the touch screen and menu buttons.
So is the HTC Magic for you? Well, to be honest I found the price point a bit steep for an Android device (then again who really knows what the ideal price is for this …) but despite that, I’m liking the phone, even as just an everyday device which you can use for calling and sending SMS. The virtual QWERTY keypad is amazingly accurate, much better than the iPhone’s. Now that’s something.
Beaming photos via Bluetooth can be a bitch so I transferred everything to the microSD card and used a card reader. I had trouble turning the device into a target drive on my Mac with the USB cable, but at the same time I was able to charge directly from the USB plug. Very convenient.
I’ll probably have to do another review of the Magic’s software component on another date as these are the items that make the Magic shine. To end, here’s a photo and video I took using the built in camera. The camera is pretty decent, processing shots exactly how they look in the viewfinder. Video’s pretty decent too.
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