***HTC Magic Thread***

[AGD]

The second android phone is now available to pre-order from vodaphone. Pricewise the phone is free on a £35 a month contract (edit and now £30 from phones4u) which comes with unlimited internet and webmail. For anyone who doesn't know, the specs are almost identical to the g1 but the battery is slightly better and it has double the rom so more apps can be installed. It has no keyboard though!

It runs on android firmware 1.5 and the full list of improvements can be seen here but some things to note are:

-soft keyboard in portrait and landscape orientation
-video recording
-much faster acquisition of GPS location

Watch a video of the phone in action here.

Ordering mine tomorrow, I've been wanting an android phone for ages but the g1 seemed too big and clunky. The phone should be released on May 1st.

Any g1 owners going to make the change or is it too similar to be worth the effort?

 

[AGD]

What does this phone offer that my G1 doesn't? Apart from a lack of physical keyboard.

It has more rom but mainly it's smaller, sleeker and looks a lot better in my opinion.

 

[AGD]

For anyone who's interested, phones4u now have a better deal on this phone with 600mins,3000 texts and unlimited internet for £30 a month on an 18 month contract instead of £35 a month on vodaphone for basically the same thing. As soon as I get mine I'll post some nice pics.

 

[AGD]

Any ideas when they will start shipping these?

Some stories suggest vodaphone put up may the 5th to cover themselves and it does seem that they've removed that from their website so some people might get them today (I'm hoping!), otherwise it'll be tuesday.

Edit: It appears that phones4u have removed the coming may 5th text on their website too implying it is available to be shipped now...

 

[AGD]

Got mine this morning, still on charge

Mine hasn't arrived yet

 

[AGD]

Mine just arrived! Just charging atm, it looks very very nice and is smaller than I expected too!

 

[AGD]

The lack of 3.5mm jack is poor but I only ever use my mp3 player to listen to music anyway so it wasn't an issue for me. Again, if you're looking for the phone with the best camera, this isn't it. Everything else is pretty damn good though!

 

[AGD]

On another note. What made you guys go for the the Magic and not the G1? Carrier? Smaller device?

It's much smaller/lighter and looks a lot better. I just couldn't bring myself to buy the g1 because it was so ugly and massive. Wasn't really bothered about the carrier.

 

[AGD]

Does this phone play iplayer?

There is currently an unofficial app called beebplayer which works really well. The quality on 3g is not that great though, wifi quality is very good.

 

[AGD]

Does anyone know if there will be any proper satnav apps for android?

My TYTN II is soon due an upgrade and the Magic looks like a nice option but I do use TomTom quite a lot on my HTC.

There's a free one called andnav2 which is in beta. There's also a commercial one called telenav. Haven't tried either. I imagine that tom tom must release an app at some point but don't know when...

 

[AGD]

I thought mrk wasn't gonna post his video so made a couple of my own! The quality isn't as good though Also it's very difficult to film with one hand and control the phone with the other whilst only looking at the camera screen!

Internet Browsing:

App market:

If anyone else wants to see videos of specific apps/features let me know.

 

[AGD]

Its only UK places it does right?

Yes for shopsavvy. I haven't tried all the other barcode scanning apps but shopsavvy gives me prices in pounds and links to british sites such as blackwells, waterstones etc.

I might put a texting vid up tomorrow, basically it's what you'd expect. Easiest to text in landscape mode as the keyboard is bigger. It has a bar with the most likely words as you type so you never have to finish a long word. It also auto corrects so if you type 'dont' or 'seperate' for example it will correct them automatically. Obviously basic functions such as cut and paste and text selection are all there unlike some other phones...

 

[AGD]

Some more apps which mrk didn't mention:

advanced task manager - does what is says on the tin
facebook sync - compares your contacts with your facebook friends list and pulls pics of them so your contacts have pics
ahome/open home/dxtop/sweeter home - different home apps with lots of cool themes, ahome and openhome have free 'lite' versions and sweeter home is free
qype - tells you good restaurants/bars/pubs/clubs etc in your area and gives you reviews of them
shazam - tells you which song is playing

locale - changes settings depending on your location e.g. if in work it might put the phone into silent mode automatically etc...has no cupcake version right now but will be ready soon.

games

throttlecopter!!!
bonsai blast
sudoku

 

[AGD]

Heads up to all magic owners, snapphoto is a must have app. Uses the accelerometer to check when the camera is moving. Takes the photo when the camera is still so you don't get blurred pics. Also allows you to edit camera settings so you can put a timer on, use sepia/negative and other effects.

 

[AGD]

Just wanted to double check, is the only difference from the G1 and the Magic the keyboard ?

As the G1 is a lot cheaper if I were just to buy the handset.

Almost, magic has no keyboard so is much smaller/lighter/better looking. The battery is better and the phone has double the rom so you can store a lot more apps (although I don't think most g1 owners run out of space yet). Some people have suggested that the screen is more responsive but I don't know about that.

If you don't mind the size and looks then go for the g1.

 

[AGD]

The build quality seems very good but then again the phone hasn't been out long so any manufacturing faults/failures might not show up yet. It's very comfortable in the pocket - very light and quite slim.

 

[AGD]

Someone asked about themes - I've only seen themes for the non-default home apps i.e. I've seen loads of themes for ahome and openhome but none for the default home (don't know if they exist?). So to get themes you can download ahome lite or openhome lite from the app store and then search for themes for them. There's also Sweeter home and dxtop. Actually ahome seems by far the most popular and has the most themes followed by dxtop which has no free version. Otherwise you could try making them yourself...

 

[AGD]

It seems some people are unsure of what home apps are. They change the way the home screen works and also allow more customisation of it than the default home screen allows. For example, many have a 'dock' which is a permanent area of chosen apps which is present on all your home screens. Most home apps allow you to add more home screens than the default 3 - up to 10 in some cases although I can't imagine needing that many! They also tend to have more widgets such as funky clocks, weather displays etc to place on home screens. They have themes or skins which change the way the icons and docks/widgets look. Some, such as sweeter home allow you to overlap pics on your home screen and resize them at the same time (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZwQez-dUdY is a nice example).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3NGHKGEO4k - ahome lite demo (has dock at bottom, up to 10 home screens in full version, widgets, themes...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ygYM3tjWAo&feature=related - openhome demo (has dock as a star icon, up to 7 screens in full version, has 'skins' and widgets...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twcUFkTRRQw - dxtop has no free version but looks quite interesting, only ever one swipe away from all 4 screens, has widgets and themes too

Also check out sweeter home which is newer and a bit rougher perhaps but has quite a lot of flexibility.

Hope all this helps to clear things up!

 

[AGD]

Do you have a video of the iphone ahome interface? is it exactly like iPhone?

One thing i'd like to have is a shell replacement that allows me to group apps into categories, like games, internet, system tools etc etc - at the mo they all sit there in alpha order!

Even if there was a separator like in Firefox bookmarks that would be fine. must be an app for it!

I know in sweeter home you can do this. Don't know about ahome or openhome though...I think the easiest solution is to have a home screen for each category.

 

[AGD]

Agreed, but when this is positioned to compete with the iphone (Please don't kill me for saying that, it's in the vodafone advertising campaign) should they not match the truly unlimited use policy on the o2 service? Some days will be much heavier than others, but i too can see myself going over 10mb a day.................easily. (app downloads, youtube uploads, photo uploads, email attachments, video streaming, radio streaming, web browsing...............................it all adds up. I'm concerned now.

I get the impression that you'll have to go over the 500mb by a substantial amount to get charged. They know that this phone is built for the internet.