Hands On: HTC Magic!

Casey already provided you with the spec of the HTC Magic which are not dissimilar to the G1. What is new and pretty exciting is the form factor and cupcake!

My first thought handling the G2 was that I was overjoyed to find it to be a little bit thinner and more-rounded throughout. My second thought was "Hey, wait a second, this is HTC and they can made stuff like the Diamond ultra-small. Can't this be smaller?" Eventually, yes, HTC will manage to shrink down Android devices. For now we're actually still seeing stuff that's been in development for a long, long time. Still, no real complaints about the size.

Read on for more thoughts and a gallery!

The screen on the G2 seemed brighter and crisper to me than the G1s, but when held up in comparison they actually ended up looking fairly similar -- just the shine of a new gadget getting to me. What is slightly better is the feel of the screen -- it felt firmer to me. The microSD card is underneth the battery door -- but not underneath the battery, thank the lords of gadgets. That battery, by the way, is the same size as the G1s, so don't guy importing a G2 in the hopes that you'll be able to squeak out more hours from your Android smartphone.

Cupcake seemed pretty good to me, but it's not the end-all-be-all of Android OSes, there's still plenty of work to be done. I barely got a chance to really test out the soft keyboard, so I can't speak to it much beyond saying that "it's there." Gmail is also slightly updated in Cupcake. My favorite feature (see it in the gallery below) is a new feature for the home screen. Sadly, it's not more widgets. Instead, it's "Live Folders," which let you create folders of things that are updated automatically (like, say, Starred Contacts).

The unit you're seeing here is actually pre-production. The final unit has a different and more logical layout, moving the send and end keys down below and lining up the rest at top. As you can see here, the Chin stays. Though I'm (infamously?) fond of the Chin and find it very useful, others might not think it's so cute or good.

Availability: April-ish in Europe.

Enough jibber jabber, on to the photos:

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