Vodafone HTC Magic landing May 5th from free

[Chris Davies]

Vodafone UK have put the HTC Magic up for pre-order, with the touchscreen Android smartphone available from free depending on contract.Â* Launched back at Mobile World Congress Read more

[datarat]

And the obvious question is: When/will there be an update for the G1?

[LazyGenius]

funny i brought this up yesterday and they just now put it up...

[vincen]

In the meantime I can confirm you Final release candidate 4 AC4 has been released this week-end for that phone

[bozeefus]

it looks like a great deal but note this:

vodafone doesn't have free mobile2mobile minutes (calling people within the carrier)***. so if u are the kind of person who likes talking with people on your own network, vodafone isn't for you. they do have unlimited texting so you can text as much as you want.

***not sure if it's true. according to this, http://shop.vodafone.co.uk/shop/mobi...flt_paymonthly there's no such thing as free mobile2mobile but i could be wrong

[n8izzle]

i dont see that great of an improvement.. i personally like my G1 better.. I dont have to wait for the US release and i already have all those features + sum (a hardware keyboard )... but the design does look of the device looks nice the only downside is that it has the same hdd and processor as the G1.. they should have improved it i think..

[LazyGenius]

Originally Posted by bozeefus

it looks like a great deal but note this:

vodafone doesn't have free mobile2mobile minutes (calling people within the carrier)***. so if u are the kind of person who likes talking with people on your own network, vodafone isn't for you. they do have unlimited texting so you can text as much as you want.

***not sure if it's true. according to this, http://shop.vodafone.co.uk/shop/mobi...flt_paymonthly there's no such thing as free mobile2mobile but i could be wrong

you do realize tmo just got free tmo to tmo. and we didnt get out phone for free either.... still sounds like a goo deal to me...

Originally Posted by n8izzle

i dont see that great of an improvement.. i personally like my G1 better.. I dont have to wait for the US release and i already have all those features + sum (a hardware keyboard )... but the design does look of the device looks nice the only downside is that it has the same hdd and processor as the G1.. they should have improved it i think..

i think the main point of this article is not which one is better it is the fact that they are offering the phone for free. the deals look almost identical but we still had to drop a few hundred bucks for the phone...

[tomdroid]

maybe we'll finally get some stereo bluethooth and video recording the phone is more attractive than the g1 because its glossy and a little thinner if u look at it next to a ga its barealy thinner so i would much rather have a full hardware keyboard than that im not vey fond of having to touchscreen keyboard plus the one on the magic looks like it sucks just give me some cupcake i already rooted my g1 to the max tethered jf 19 rc 33 apps on sd multi touch but i dont have a vidoe camera so i really want some video recording since the g1's camera is pretty good :]]

[johnalkateb]

As said earlier the idea of this phone is not to start finding out which one is better G1/Magic.

I had the G1 on T-mobile for a week but then sadly had to return it. I loved the phone so much I didn't want to return it. But bottom line is that I didn't get a single bar of signal with T-mobile where I lived even though I live pretty much in the heart of Gloucester town.

Now the reason why I'm so excited about the Magic is because it means I can finally have an Android phone and have a service provider that I know will allow me to have signal where I live.

This phone isn't really meant to compete with the G1 strongly it's meant to provide customers with an alternative choice to their Android needs. The majority of people that wanted an Android phone badly and their situation allowed them to be with T-mobile will have already done that. So therefore they will not be able to get the Magic even if it was 100x better as they will already be locked into an 18 month contract. (setting aside people that decide to terminate contract early by paying off the remaining contract length. But that is a very big expenditure.)

I feel the purpose of this phone is to allow consumers that weren't able to get the G1 for whatever reason to have an alternative solution. Which is the exact situation I'm in. I think the Android software is amazing and I have been waiting since the second that I returned my G1 for a new phone on a different network provider to come out.

I don't mind too much about the loss of a physical keyboard. But at least the people at HTC where smart enough to keep all of the features from the G1 that make it the must have Android phone.

I can't wait for in the future when nearly all major manufacturers have an Android phone at different classes (i.e. high-end and budget phones) and every major network provider has a few Android phones that they can offer.

Sorry for the long reply but I wanted to explain my thought process and see how you all feel.

[unpaidbill]

The new phone looks great. Unfortunately, without multitouch support it's a downgrade for anyone who wants to play a game on their handset. Android isn't going to be going anywhere fast until we get this support. I love my G1 and will stick with it, there are no upgrades without multitouch or a physical keyboard. As soon as Google stops ***** footing around and puts native multitouch in, the game is over for iPhone/Pre.

On top of that, I'd love to know how things like connectbot will work on this. Without multitouch entering special characters and capital letters is going to be a huge pain in the ass. The main reason I got the G1 is because it has much easier entry of non alphanumeric characters.

Boring phone, but at least we'll have cupcake on our G1s within the first couple weeks of May, hopefully.