Pixel Concept

Although the HTC Magic has been overshadowed by its sibling, the HTC Hero, I still wanted to post up some first impressions on the device. There are plenty of full reviews out there so I will probably not be doing a full write up, but I figured some brief thoughts on the device couldn’t hurt. The first thing that I noticed about the Magic was that it finally looked like an HTC designed device. The Dream was a great first run at Android, but the hardware was sorely lacking. It didn’t have that HTC flare that the manufacturing giant has come to be known for. The Magic on the other hand, is sleek and solid. The back slides on like a traditional battery cover and is a lot more stable than the snap on back of the Dream. The chin still exists on the Magic, but it is a lot less pronounced than on the Dream. It has a nice rounded shape to it that adds to the design. The sleekness of the device can of course be attributed to the lack of a QWERTY keyboard; unfortunately, the virtual keyboard makes it noticeable. Of course that has more to do with Cupcake than with the device itself, but it is an aspect of Cupcake that needs improvement. Outside of the keyboard however, the OS runs well on the Magic. There is still the issue of slowness building over time. A stronger processor and more RAM could have alleviated this issue, but for some unknown reason, HTC decided to stick with the Qualcomm 528MHz processor. Even with those small caveats, the Magic is a solid device and first full touch-screen Android device. A great choice if the Hero is not available on your carrier.

Any time you attend a trade-show, seminar, or conference, you will usually leave with a bunch of swag. Sometimes it’s good swag, other times not so much. Well if you attended Google’s I/O developer conference this year, you were greeted with a great little gadget which, like any HTC manufactured device, has many names: The HTC Google I/O aka Google ION, aka HTC Magic, aka G2 aka HTC Sapphire aka T-Mobile myTouch 3G. Although the recent announcement of HTC’s Hero now has the spotlight, the official successor to the G1 has been long awaited. Click on for the unboxing of this limited edition smartphone.

HTC Google I/O Unboxing Gallery