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Meet the HTC Magic (Reviews are in!)

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NetMapel

Guilty White Male Mods Gave Me This Tag
I just went to Canada's Rogers website and noticed our model looks different from the one posted in this forum. Is Canada only getting a G1 HTC model !? I hate that HTC model and thinks it looks ugly. This new curvier HTC looks so much better...
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
NetMapel said:
I just went to Canada's Rogers website and noticed our model looks different from the one posted in this forum. Is Canada only getting a G1 HTC model !? I hate that HTC model and thinks it looks ugly. This new curvier HTC looks so much better...

Rogers is getting both the G1 (HTC Dream) and the HTC Magic (as per OP) on June 2nd.
 
People with G1/Magics or knowledge on this subject:

I had a Samsung Instinct, which used a microsd card like the HTC Android phones. Everytime I went to look at pictures or play music from the card, it had to scan and reload the items. The most painful part was that it had to scan the card to build the music library every time, which could take a while.

Is this the case on the G1/Magic when using accessing media from the external card?
 

Skittleguy

Ring a Bell for me
Andrex said:
Rogers is getting both the G1 (HTC Dream) and the HTC Magic (as per OP) on June 2nd.
Either one for $149 on a three-year term with minimum $45 plan activation at BestBuy (or so I've heard).
 

NetMapel

Guilty White Male Mods Gave Me This Tag
Andrex said:
Rogers is getting both the G1 (HTC Dream) and the HTC Magic (as per OP) on June 2nd.
Oh that's good to hear ! Yesssss !!! But I don't want to give Rogers more of my money, but we will see. Maybe I'll get this phone by itself without the contract and then put in my current Rogers SIM card in there.
 

Ripclawe

Banned
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/05/24/rogers-htc-dream-review/comment-page-2/

First things first. Yes, the Rogers Dream does come loaded with Android OS 1.5 aka Cupcake. But, and this is a huge but (think J Lo circa 1999 here), it does not come with all of the awesome features that T-Mobile G1 users are enjoying / will be enjoying with Cupcake. You see, the Dream has been loaded with custom firmware that more or less kills off a bunch of the cool new features of the update, the most notable being the lack of the soft keyboard. Why is this? Well, take a look at the back of the device:

There isn’t any physical branding of the Google trademark on the device. This means that Rogers likely said no thanks to Google and asked HTC to make custom modified firmware build that includes the typical, ugly and permanent links to a few of Rogers’ mobile content shops and its website. On top of that, one of the most basic things we have come to expect in a smartphone — a note taking application — is nowhere to be found.
 

Skittleguy

Ring a Bell for me
NetMapel said:
Oh that's good to hear ! Yesssss !!! But I don't want to give Rogers more of my money, but we will see. Maybe I'll get this phone by itself without the contract and then put in my current Rogers SIM card in there.
$600.
bbandroidimage.jpg
 

Krelian

Member
jonnybryce said:
People with G1/Magics or knowledge on this subject:

I had a Samsung Instinct, which used a microsd card like the HTC Android phones. Everytime I went to look at pictures or play music from the card, it had to scan and reload the items. The most painful part was that it had to scan the card to build the music library every time, which could take a while.

Is this the case on the G1/Magic when using accessing media from the external card?
The content on the MicroSD card is accessed quickly. I didn't notice any delay when listening to music or viewing pictures.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
HTC is having an event in London on the 16th. The invite has a guy with a big flower on his coat, so some people are speculating this is for the HTC Hero with its "Rosie" GUI. We shall see.

The event is supposedly for a global phone launch so we may get some US details on the Hero. I gotta admit I'll be feeling burned if we get US Hero details before T-mo releases anything on the Magic.

Also keep in mind the Archos event takes place on the 11th, and is strongly rumored to be the event they'll announce their Android tablet (rumored to be highly similar to the Archos 5 series, including HD video playback). The even might not include global or US details though, unfortunately.
 

El Papa

Member
NetMapel said:
Holy crap Rogers. Dammit Canada, when are we going to get better service providers than these crap companies :(
The Rogers android build is pretty much like the Sapphire build, except that it has a few Rogers icons like Shop, My Account, etc, that link via web browser. It has the HTC coolness like the dailer, white on black texting, HTC keyboard, HTC Camera, etc. I'm going to flash my G1 with this rom as soon as I download the Android SDK to sign my modded version.

Andrex said:
HTC is having an event in London on the 16th. The invite has a guy with a big flower on his coat, so some people are speculating this is for the HTC Hero with its "Rosie" GUI. We shall see.
I flashed the Hero rom, I really dig the Rosie interface. Like really, the HTC widgets are awsome. It ran pretty smooth on my G1, but was missing Bluetooth and was pretty buggy. I'm really impressed with what HTC did with it, and Google for making Android so flexible. Can't wait till this phone is out so we get a full, stable rom. Android is the FUTUR!
 

sikkinixx

Member
Why o why couldn't Fido get it at least. $45 plus SAF plus 911 Fee plus taxes? almost $60 BEFORE FUCKING CALLER ID?! Just fucking dumb.
 
Android still looks laggy as fuck from everything i've seen. Probably the number one thing I can't deal with in a phone anymore.
 

El Papa

Member
Not trying to be an ass, but it sounds like you haven't seen very much recently. The newest 1.5 builds, especially Ion, are blazing fast, faster than any phone OS I've personally used.
 
TheHeretic said:
Android still looks laggy as fuck from everything i've seen. Probably the number one thing I can't deal with in a phone anymore.

It's not laggy at all. The browser makes the iPhone browser look terrible, especially as it doesn't need to repaint the screen every time you scroll.
 

Big-E

Member
I am retarded when it comes to these new phones as I still am using a Samsung 707SC that I bought from a friend. I had my eye on the HTC Magic and I was wondering if it is possible to flash the phone to remove all that Rogers crap from it?
 

El Papa

Member
El Papa said:
I flashed the Hero rom, I really dig the Rosie interface. Like really, the HTC widgets are awsome. It ran pretty smooth on my G1, but was missing Bluetooth and was pretty buggy. I'm really impressed with what HTC did with it, and Google for making Android so flexible. Can't wait till this phone is out so we get a full, stable rom. Android is the FUTUR!
I forgot to mention, the Hero browser supports FLASH. :O
 

El Papa

Member
Hero is cool, but incomplete and buggy. Ion is stock ADP style but FAST. Hero takes a bit of effort to flash and can be confusing if you're a nub.

I would suggest Ion. Or the Rogers rom if you want the HTC goodies, and it's pretty fast as well.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
El Papa said:
The Rogers android build is pretty much like the Sapphire build, except that it has a few Rogers icons like Shop, My Account, etc, that link via web browser. It has the HTC coolness like the dailer, white on black texting, HTC keyboard, HTC Camera, etc. I'm going to flash my G1 with this rom as soon as I download the Android SDK to sign my modded version.

Quick Q, are those Rogers icons trash-able or uninstallable?

El Papa said:
I forgot to mention, the Hero browser supports FLASH. :O

WAT?

How's it run? Can you load up like 50MB videos with it?

This seems odd to me because at Google I/O one of the devs said not to hold your breath for Flash, and that behind the scenes it would be an nightmare to get it to work. Not to mention that I have personally always thought that it would be a couple years before phone hardware would be able to run it smoothly...

Battersea Power Station said:
Hopefully that won't be necessary in the near future:

http://blog.dailymotion.com/2009/05/27/watch-videowithout-flash/

Heard about that yesterday, but just tried it now... Using the Opera 10 Beta, it's indiscernible from Flash (as far as I can see). O_O This is the future.
 

NetMapel

Guilty White Male Mods Gave Me This Tag
Hold on, what's going on here ? I thought Goolge Ion = HTC Magic. I'm confused now...
 

ZROCOOL

aka II VerTigo II
El Papa said:
Not trying to be an ass, but it sounds like you haven't seen very much recently. The newest 1.5 builds, especially Ion, are blazing fast, faster than any phone OS I've personally used.

Papa speaks the truth I got the update earlier and man its way faster then 1.1

Smooth like butter
 

El Papa

Member
Andrex said:
Quick Q, are those Rogers icons trash-able or uninstallable?
There's a version of the rom without all the Rogers crap. Otherwise, you'll have to go into the rom and pull it out yourself, resign, and flash.

Andrex said:
WAT?

How's it run? Can you load up like 50MB videos with it?

This seems odd to me because at Google I/O one of the devs said not to hold your breath for Flash, and that behind the scenes it would be an nightmare to get it to work. Not to mention that I have personally always thought that it would be a couple years before phone hardware would be able to run it smoothly...
I personally didn't try any Flash stuff when I had it on my G1. :( Unfortunately, the kernel in the Hero rom doesn't support wifi tethering, which is my only line to the internet right now. From what the guys over at XDA were saying, it runs aright, not great. I'd imaging it's due to the G1's lack of memory and processing power. And the fact that the Hero roms floating around are ports and are incomplete.

HTC has done some crazy voodoo magic to get Flash running on Hero. It uses HTC's custom framework libraries not found in the Google builds.

NetMaple said:
Hold on, what's going on here ? I thought Goolge Ion = HTC Magic. I'm confused now...
Google Ion is actually a special rom + phone that was given to developers at the Google I/O conference last week. It's like a special edition Magic, it's got metal buttons.
 

NetMapel

Guilty White Male Mods Gave Me This Tag
El Papa said:
Google Ion is actually a special rom + phone that was given to developers at the Google I/O conference last week. It's like a special edition Magic, it's got metal buttons.
Ok thanks El Papa :D I just searched for HTC Hero on Google and saw the leak picture of the phone. I think I like the HTC Magic looks better, haha...

By the way, I know Andriod 1.5 came out fairly recently, was it easy for the G1 users to upgrade their phone's Andriod OS to 1.5 ? How about that Cupcake OS from a branch group ?
 

El Papa

Member
T-mobile G1 users got the Android 1.5 (which includes cupcake) as on OTA update, phone notified you and asked to update. Pretty painless.

Some people like me flashed a cupcake build compiled from the source (didn't work very well, Neo!), or the Sapphire build that was leaked. Actually, I think the first cupcake build I flashed was the ADP 1.5 build HTC released on their website before Cupcake was publicly released.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
How can you drop a megaton like there being Flash yet not even confirm it for yourself? v.v Disappointed.

NetMapel said:
Ok thanks El Papa :D I just searched for HTC Hero on Google and saw the leak picture of the phone. I think I like the HTC Magic looks better, haha...

HTC Magic definitely looks better, but the look for the Hero is growing on me:

HTCHero02.jpg


HTCHero01.png


Maybe it's the fire engine red.

That said, if the hardware is beefy enough to support Flash, and it has the rumored headphone jack, then it could be a winner at the right cost. I also think those colors will go over great with the teens.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
El Papa said:
There's a newer, more optimized version out, I might flash that to check it out. JUST FOR U!!

<3

And just like the design of the Hero itself, the Rosie UI is growing on me too. Looks really slick:

rosie3-main-screen.jpg


rosie4-calendar-widget.jpg


rosie-lock-screen.jpg


rosie8-media-player-widget.jpg


rosie12-weather-and-settings.jpg


rosie-bookmarks-in-browser.jpg


rosie-bookmarks-widget.jpg


rosie-browser-page-loading.jpg


Many More Here

I'm only concerned with how existing apps will fit in with the style.
 

NetMapel

Guilty White Male Mods Gave Me This Tag
Andrex said:
How can you drop a megaton like there being Flash yet not even confirm it for yourself? v.v Disappointed.



HTC Magic definitely looks better, but the look for the Hero is growing on me:

HTCHero02.jpg


HTCHero01.png


Maybe it's the fire engine red.

That said, if the hardware is beefy enough to support Flash, and it has the rumored headphone jack, then it could be a winner at the right cost. I also think those colors will go over great with the teens.
Yeah... no :( I don't like the tilt at the end. Also, the four sides of the phone isn't curvy like Magic, which is something I really like. Screen looks big and nice though :D

Curious, is the Rosie UI a mainline UI from the Android team or from a branch team like Cupcake ? How easy would it be to update my HTC Magic's Andriod 1.5 UI to Rosie when it's out ? Will I need to "flash" my phone or whatever you guys were talking about before ? Given both Magic and Hero uses touchscreen interface, I hope it won't be too hard to adapt. I quite like that look of Rosie UI.

Oh, and I went to Rogers today to take a look at HTC Magic and it's hot :D It's black with metallic buttons ! Doesn't like sound like the Google Ion ?
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
NetMapel said:
Curious, is the Rosie UI a mainline UI from the Android team or from a branch team like Cupcake ?

Rosie is 100% an HTC creation. Maybe some of their code will be contributed to future official Android releases, but right now you'll only get it from HTC.

NetMapel said:
How easy would it be to update my HTC Magic's Andriod 1.5 UI to Rosie when it's out ? Will I need to "flash" my phone or whatever you guys were talking about before ? Given both Magic and Hero uses touchscreen interface, I hope it won't be too hard to adapt. I quite like that look of Rosie UI.

It's possible, and yeah rooting and flashing is required. One odd thing I would think, though, is that the Hero doesn't have a trackball, so I wonder if it would recognize the Magic's/G1's.

NetMapel said:
Oh, and I went to Rogers today to take a look at HTC Magic and it's hot :D It's black with metallic buttons ! Doesn't like sound like the Google Ion ?

They're exactly the same hardware-wise with the exception of the brands printed on the device. Software-wise, it seems like the Ion firmware has some speed improvements.

I like black except for those metallic buttons, though. So white is my preferred color.
 

NetMapel

Guilty White Male Mods Gave Me This Tag
I just saw a youtube demo and the guy said HTC Magic does not need a data plan for it to work. That sounds great and all, but I cannot afford $600 to buy this phone with no contract :(
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
NetMapel said:
I just saw a youtube demo and the guy said HTC Magic does not need a data plan for it to work. That sounds great and all, but I cannot afford $600 to buy this phone with no contract :(

I don't think any phone needs a data plan to work as a phone, and if it has Wi-Fi to access data-centric features.

The $600 unlocked price is definitely steep, but I'm kind of expecting Google to start selling it as the second developers' phone, unlocked for $400 while lowering the first one's cost. In fact, what they pulled at Google I/O with the Ion convinces me even further of this.
 

NetMapel

Guilty White Male Mods Gave Me This Tag
Andrex said:
I like how my avatar is constantly being used in awesome ways :D

Also, given that I will most likely only need to use the phone for internet browsing, possibly some of the apps such as that bar code scanning one, google map, GPS, voice mail and caller display, I don't think I'll need a data plan, yeah ? I don't quite understand what the difference between a data plan and internet browsing is :(
 

El Papa

Member
Sorry guys, I fell asleep. >_<

Ok, I checked out the Flash capabilities in the brower. Visited some web sites that have Flash banners, and watched some Cyanide and Happiness Flash movies. Mixed results. On one hand, I'm just impressed they got Flash running. It actually runs pretty good for simple Flash animations. If you long press a flash movie, it lets you view it full screen, which is awesome. Sound is in sync, buttons and such respond to touch.

Now for the negatives: The latest version of Flash isn't supported. Vector elements are aliased (low quality setting). SWFs having lots of non-vector elements (jpgs, pngs) take a while to load, especially if there are multiple swfs on the page. Complex animations or fast animations studder badly. Ad banners are visible. :p

Verdict: Not bad, but I can see the benefit from a more stable rom and better hardware.

NetMapel said:
Also, given that I will most likely only need to use the phone for internet browsing, possibly some of the apps such as that bar code scanning one, google map, GPS, voice mail and caller display, I don't think I'll need a data plan, yeah ? I don't quite understand what the difference between a data plan and internet browsing is :(
I would almost bet the you will regret not getting a data plan. Internet uses data. Almost every aspect of the system uses data, that's why T-mobile in the US requires you to get a special G1 data plan when you buy it. Even the barcode scanner, to show you prices and such. A lot of really cool apps in the app Market use data. Some widgets use data. Maps uses data to find local information relevant to you, there's an awesome Movie app that gives you local theaters, movie times, ratings, descriptions. There's a Scoreboard app that gives you your favorite team scores, schedules, standings. Market IM apps use data. Your contacts, email, calendar all use data to sync to Google servers.

I'm not trying to get you to spend money you can't afford, but using an Android phone without data kinda defeats the purpose, imo. If you have the choice, get a data plan so you don't get screwed on data charges. If it ends up being too much, can't you change your plan later? I would check.

To make it simpler to understand, think of a mobile phone like the Magic having 3 methods of communication: Voice, Text and data. Voice and text are obvious, data is 3G. Any aspect of your phone that connects to the internet to transmit info, such as the web browser, Maps, etc., is data and uses your 3G connection. If you connect to a Wifi hotspot, your phone switches to that for data transfer. Wifi is faster, but you can't take it with you. 3G is everywhere you can get a signal.

THE CHOICE IS YOURS.
 

El Papa

Member
The Google apps are in the roms themselves, so they're pretty much the same, except with Rosie the calendar is re-skinned. Maps work, but on the Hero build I'm using, sync is wonky, photoframe widget crashes. The Rosie UI on the build I'm using is pretty fast, much better than the first Hero build, but not as fast as Ion or vanilla 1.5. I'd imagine it's because this port is incomplete and the G1's hardware isn't up to spec for this UI.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
HTC Hero and Lancaster to be Shown on June 24th?

HTC's hipsteriffic invitations for a June 24th event in London contained precious few clues (DUDE'S WEARING A ROSE), but the Economic Daily News is now reporting something totally reasonable: it's for the Hero and Lancaster, HTC's presumed next Android phones.

Curiously, the paper refers to the two phones as one device, in two versions differentiated only by a keyboard.

The HTC Hero will be available in two versions, with and without a QWERTY keyboard. The model with a keyboard will be named HTC Memphis, or HTC Lancaster for sale by AT&T exclusively in the US for six months starting the third quarter, the paper indicated.​
Source.

T-Mobile Confirms Summer Android Phone

NEW YORK (Reuters) - T-Mobile, the mobile arm of Deutsche Telekom, said on Tuesday it would start selling its next device running Google Inc's Android operating system in early summer.

T-Mobile USA, the No. 4 U.S. mobile service, said it has sold more than a million G1 phones, made by HTC Corp since it started selling them last year.

"T-Mobile is planning to offer the follow-on device to the T-Mobile G1 early this summer," the company said in an e-mailed statement that did not give any more details about the device.

The news comes days before Palm Inc is scheduled to launch its Pre phone and new webOS operating system, which is a rival to Android. Apple Inc is also expected to announce a new version of iPhone next week.
Source.

A story I came across on this subject said that they got the impression the phone wouldn't be made by HTC, but I think this will be the US version of the Magic (MyTouch or whatever) based on Google's stint at I/O.

El Papa said:
Sorry guys, I fell asleep. >_<

Ok, I checked out the Flash capabilities in the brower. Visited some web sites that have Flash banners, and watched some Cyanide and Happiness Flash movies. Mixed results. On one hand, I'm just impressed they got Flash running. It actually runs pretty good for simple Flash animations. If you long press a flash movie, it lets you view it full screen, which is awesome. Sound is in sync, buttons and such respond to touch.

Now for the negatives: The latest version of Flash isn't supported. Vector elements are aliased (low quality setting). SWFs having lots of non-vector elements (jpgs, pngs) take a while to load, especially if there are multiple swfs on the page. Complex animations or fast animations studder badly. Ad banners are visible. :p

Verdict: Not bad, but I can see the benefit from a more stable rom and better hardware.

Very impressive, I must say. I knew there'd be some performance problems, but the full screen and buttons/interactivity you mentioned is very encouraging. :D
 

kIdMuScLe

Member
holy shit was Hero a bitch to install if you have never done this before. took me hours... hell at one point i thought i bricked the phone. tonight after is time i'll try out those optimize packages and see if it speeds up the the systme
 

Ephemeris

Member
And according to another leaked roadmap as seen here:
The myTouch 3G (originally identified as the "myPhone" internally, so the name could be worse) is listed for 5/18 manufacturing approval and an 8/5 onsale date online and in stores. As we've said before, this feels late given the company's recent comments about an "early summer" Android debut -- we wouldn't be surprised if it's been tightened up for a quicker release.
 

sikkinixx

Member
The dude at Futureshit opened up a brand new Magic and let me play with it a bit (are they allowed to do that???)... I want so bad. It feels perfect in my hand, I like the look, even with the "older" UI, i love it's Google'ness. But yeah... the dude was upfront with "expect to pay close to $100 a month after taxes/fees if you want basic shit like voicemail/caller id/texting"... WAY too rich for my blood :)
 

ep85

Member
Ephemeris said:
So yeah, the Magic/Ion's gonna be called the MyTouch3G (bleh!). Black, White and Merlot.

I can see it now.

"Cool phone, what is it?"
"Its a Mytouch 3g"
"You want me to touch what?"

Blerg. The packaging looks hip though. I'm tempted to jump to Tmobile for it.
 
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