Reviews on HTC Magic

The good: The compact HTC Touch features an advanced touch screen that lets you operate the smart phone with your fingertips. The Windows Mobile 6 smart phone also has an updated interface, integrated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and a 3.2 megapixel camera.

The bad: The Touch's tiny onscreen keyboard makes it a pain to enter any text, and the TouchFLO feature doesn't work in landscape mode. The SIM card and microSD slots are hard to access. Also, speakerphone quality was poor, and the device can be sluggish at times.

The bottom line: The HTC Touch boasts an innovative touch screen and sleek interface, but the lack of a sizable keyboard really limits the usability of this device. And despite the beautiful hardware, the Windows Mobile smart phone lags in performance and needs a bit more tweaking before we're ready to snatch one up.

The HTC Magic Gets My Vote....

By Katherine Garside

When I caught a first glimpse of the HTC Magic I was really impressed by the cool, minimal design and clean lines. It's a lot smaller and more compact than the iphone, which is better for me since it can fit easily into a small handbag and is pretty lightweight too. The fact that it also comes in white is a refreshing change. I found the look of it very appealing overall.

Actually getting to play around with the phone and test what it could do was probably the best bit. It has absolutely thousands of applications that you can download - from growing your own flower, to spin the bottle to even using the built in GPS function to find which direction to pray!!

There is also a good choice of games available and the camera doubles up as a scanner, a kind of mobile price comparison tool - so when you are out and about and want to find where to buy a product for the best price you simply scan the barcode of the product using your HTC Magic and it will list the number of places where you can buy that product for the best price!

The phone also has inbuilt music recognition - so if your out in your favourite club and here a track you like your phone can tell you who it is by and where you can buy it - clever ay? This phone really can entertain you for hours with its clever technology as well as being a useful resource for information.

To top it off the inbuilt suit of Google services is extremely useful...Google search works just as well as on your computer and the internet connection speed is the fastest I've experienced when surfing on a mobile. Google maps, again, was similar to how it appears on your pc and the added feature of street view meant that you could view a 360 degree image of your location, making it easy to pin point yours or your friend's location. - I love things that make life so much easier and this phone certainly will! I really rate it!

Vodafone's HTC Magic

by Sandra Vogel

Yesterday afternoon I was given a preview of Vodafone's new HTC Magic. Due to go on sale on 5 May it is available for free on plans costing £30 a month and up.

The HTC Magic runs version 1.5 of Google's Android platform, better known as Cupcake. It's the first outing for the updated software, though owners of T-Mobile's G1 will also be able to get their hands on it by way of a software upgrade.

The HTC Magic really blew my socks off. The hardware is quite nicely designed in a consumer friendly shiny white plastic. It is much more compatible in size to other touchscreened smartphones than the G1 was. This is because it lacks the G1's extra height forced by the need to accommodate its hardware based keyboard under the screen. A qwerty keyboard is provided as an on-screen tappable one this time round.

First Look at the HTC Magic

Vodafone's HTC Magic was only announced yesterday, but IT PRO, along with sister title Know Your Mobile, was one of the few titles lucky enough to steal a glimpse and have a play with the new Android-powered Google phone.

The handset wasn't even on display at the Vodafone or HTC stands and we only managed to strike lucky by hanging around the latter for long enough to catch an HTC guy walking around with one.