HTC Magic – lots of improvements from the earlier G1
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Improved version of G1, great call quality, easy to use interface for Android OS.
Thumbs Down:
Applications can be stored only on internal memory, bad camera, lack of 3.5 mm phone jack, no muli touch interface for touch screen.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone design: Candy bar.
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: Camera, 3G, music player.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
The display of Magic is 3.2 inch big, gives a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels. Recognized audio formats are AAC+, MIDI, WMA, WAV, OGG, MP3, AMR, AAC. Connectors on the phone include Data port – 11 pin HTC ExtUSB. The handset has a 3.2 mega pixel camera with maximum resolution of 2048×1536 pixels and is also capable of recording videos, QVGA@15fps.
The phone is powered by Qualcomm MSM 7200A 528 MHz processor and runs on Android OS. The battery of the handset has a rated talk time of seven and half hours with GSM and 6.6 hours with 3G. Standby time is 17.5 days. The handset comes with 288 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM memory and there is extra 2 GB microSD card bundled along with the phone.
Razzle Dazzle:
Magic is different from the earlier G1 and we welcome this change since it makes the phone much prettier. The physical keyboard has been given up and this phone as a glossy skin, sleek interiors and an attractive black-blue color design. The handset is 0.65 inches deep, 2.19 inches wide, 4.65 inches tall and weighs 4.09 ounces. The slim and light device will have no problems finding room in your tight jeans.
Inside Dope:
HTC Magic aka Google Ion is the second Android phone after the T-Mobile G1 and given what the G1 had to offer we were excited about what the next Android phone had in store for us. We were waiting rather impatiently for this phone and pounced on it as soon as it arrived in our test centers. This phone still has the user friendly intuitive interface and has lots of features on the inside. It does improve a lot on the previous G1 but still has a lot to be desired.
The display of the gorgeous screen is 3.2 inch big and you get a 480X320 pixel resolution which gives you great photos, graphics and colors on the screen. You can adjust backlighting time and brightness on the device.
You get three home screens for placing your icons for the applications that you use the most. You will have to swipe your finger across the screen to access these pages. Ion lets you add any number of icons to a page. The touch screen interface of the device was quite responsive, just like the iPhone. You drag your finger through a screen to scroll up and down and you flick for faster browsing through the pages. The Ion has an accelerometer but it doesn’t work for every feature and the screen isn’t multi touch so you cannot ‘pinch’ the photos like you did with the iPhone.
The phone has haptic feedback but this is again not available for all the features. A single tap on the icons won’t give you feedback but a long press will. You long press on the icon to get a list of commands for that application. You also long press to move the icon around on the screen. We were delighted that the Ion had a capacitive touch screen which doesn’t need stylus for using it.
Below the display there is a button that brings up the main menu. The main menu is not simple without any overwhelming graphics or animation. You will have to scroll up and down using your finger to see the entire pages. There is a Google Search bar above the home screen which will give you a keyboard when tapped once. We were disappointed that this keyboard couldn’t be used in horizontal mode along with the accelerometer. There is also a voice search feature for the bar.
There are a few physical buttons below the screen, the number of buttons have been increased (as compared to G1) which makes it look a bit crowded. There is home button, Talk and End/power buttons, menu control, back button and shortcut key for Google Search. The trackball is larger and hence is more ergonomics.
The phone dialer can be brought up by pressing the call button or through the menu. The dialer is intuitive and simple, the buttons were large, and pressing them was easy with the responsive touch screen however we would have loved haptic feedback for the buttons.
The landscape keyboard can be used with browser applications, e-mail and messaging. Unfortunately all you get is a vertical keyboard for Google Search bar. We had a lot of mishits when typing on the vertical keyboard owing to the small size of the buttons.
On the sides of the handset, there is a volume rocker which is a bit small. There is no 3.5 mm head set phone jack so you can’t plug in any standard headphones. There is a single microUSB port for USB cord, charger and headset so you can use only one peripheral at a time.
A single entry in the phone book can hold four e-mail IDs, eight phone numbers, street address, notes and organization/company name. You can make groups of your contacts and assign custom ringtone to them. Features on the phone include multimedia and text messaging, calendar, alarm clock, voice dialing and calculator. Features on this phone are the same as G1.
To download applications free or otherwise, there is Android Market place which is again unchanged. It is user friendly, easy to use and quick. Like previous Android phone, you cannot store application to external memory cards, internal memory is all you get. The handset has 512 MB ROM, 288 MB RAM so make sure you use the memory judiciously. You get a 2 GB memory card along with the phone for storing photos, videos and music.
Ion comes with stereo Bluetooth and autopairing, video playback and video recording which the G1 lacked. Bluetooth pairing was extremely quick and fast but the video recorder didn’t have much editing options. Cupcake also lets you upload videos to YouTube, uploading of photos to Picassa, copy and paste within a web browser, etc.
The phone has a 3.2 MP camera however we thought that it is included simply because others are doing it. The image quality doesn’t live up to the 3.2 MP tag, the autofocus is very difficult to use and we think that this is an extremely low performance camera.
Music quality is good as long as you are using a headset, be it wired headset or Bluetooth. Speaker phone music was tinny but that is not unusual for a multi media phone. Videos do not look that good, the YouTube appear pixelated, videos are below average due to the lamentable camera.
The HTML browser on the handset was one of the best features of the phone. Big screen combined with the accelerometer make browsing comfortable. There are onscreen icons for zooming in and out of the pages. However lack of multi touch features still keeps the Safari on the top of other browsers.
We would have loved improvements in the messaging features on the phone because they are still the same as G1. There is no support for Microsoft Exchange Server. Checking mails through the Outlook Web Access (OWA) was miserable experience. It doesn’t have Outlook for syncing calendar, notes or contacts which will be a turn off for business users. We would have also liked support for IMAP4.
We tested the phone for call quality, it was quite amazing. We could hear our friends clearly and they could hear us clearly too. The volume level could have been a bit louder because we had trouble listening to our friends in noisy environments. Our friends also told that they couldn’t hear us clearly when we were in noisy places.
The quality dipped when we used the speaker phone, the audio was fuzzy and garbled just like G1. The volume level could have been more and we had to place the phone close to make ourselves heard to our friends.
The battery of the handset has a rated talk time of seven and half hours with GSM and 6.6 hours with 3G. Standby time is 17.5 days. The processor of the phone was quite fast and responded quickly in opening applications. We didn’t experience any crashes or freezes which is common for such phones.
Nitty Gritty:
Magic has improved a lot from the previous G1 and though it has some issues like camera and messaging, we think this is a great phone for youth and business class users alike.
