HTC Magic. Is this the future of phones?

HTC MAGIC

The HTC Dream is currently the only phone that runs Google's Android open-source operating system for smart phones. This all looks to change soon though as there will be a new little brother on the market. Welcome to the world of HTC Magic. Let me take you on a magically inspired tour and see what the future holds for the Android open source system .

The HTC Magic should be shipped out in the next couple of weeks. At its launch stages the phone will only be available in Europe. The initial exclusive rights have been snatched up by Vodafone who will be looking at releasing in France, Spain, Germany and the UK. The French side will be controlled via SFR, which is a co-ownership by Vivendi and Vodafone.

The HTC Magic announcement was made at the Mobile World Congress 2009 trade show, which was recently held in Barcelona. HTC is also planning on releasing it Touch Pro2 and Touch Diamond2 smart phones in the next few weeks, again initially this would only be available in Europe but has the added benefit of being rolled out in Asia. They are likely to follow the path of the HTC magic and will look at releasing in the United States.

There are many similarities with the HTC Dream and the HTC Magic.

The following are included:

3.2-inch QVGA touch-screen display

Trackball,

3.2-megapixel camera,

3.5G and Wi-Fi connectivity,

microSD 2.0 support.

They both include a full array of Google apps GoogleMail, GoogleTalk, GoogleMaps, GoogleSearch, and YouTube), POP3 and IMAP support, and access to the Android Market. Both models use the 528MHz Qualcomm MSM7201A processor, and include 256MB ROM and 192MB RAM.

The main and most striking difference is that the HTC Magic does not include a slide-out, five-row, QWERTY keyboard like the HTC Dream does. The HTC Magic is also about an ounce and a half lighter than the HTC Dream as well as being a slightly smaller device).

The HTC Magic's 1,340mAh Lithium-Ion battery is rated to last longer (450 minutes talk time, 420 hours standby for GSM) than the HTC Dream's 1,150mAh Li-Ion battery (406 minutes talk time, 319 hours standby for GSM).

The future success of Andoid phones still remains to be seen. As of now, Android-based smartphones represent only about 3-percent of smartphones making Internet requests in the U.S., according to AdMob. Until more mobile phone manufacturers release Android phones and more Android-based models make it onto the market, Android will remain to be little more than an interesting experiment in open-source mobile-phone technology.