August 13th, 2009
Review of Android on the HTC Magic
It’s been about a month and a half since I picked up my HTC Magic — and I think it’s about time that I write my review.
The form factor of the phone, as compared with the iPhone is better in my opinion. After using this device for a month, the width of the iPhone gave me flashbacks to my first brick phone. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I much prefer the “feel” of my Magic.
The architecture for applications is much nicer on Android than the iPhone — the ability to run services in the background is hard to live without once you’ve tasted it. Unfortunately, from a user interface standpoint, it’s difficult to make applications on Android that are comparable to most iPhone apps.
Now for the bad stuff.
As far as third party applications go, the Android Market isn’t as mature as the App Store. I don’t have access to paid apps here in Canada — but based on what I can see, there are fewer apps, and of lower quality.
I made a small (free) sample application for Big Brother fans called “BB11 Live” to gauge how fast an application like it could grow. Since I uploaded the application about a month ago, 1316 people have downloaded it.
Performance on this phone is terrible in comparison to iPhone. Not only is the soft keyboard narrower than the iPhone (because of the form factor), but it’s a lot less responsive. Clicking a key doesn’t give you any sort of immediate response like you get on the iPhone — and the longer your phone stays on, the worse it gets.
Performance doesn’t stop with the keyboard though — the operating system in general don’t respond to your finger even close to as nicely as on the iPhone. I am thinking a lot of these issues are hardware related, but no doubt there are some performance issues that need to be resolved on Google’s end too.
Browsing without multi-touch capabilities like “pinch” isn’t as nice either. You are stuck using the zoom in and out buttons on the screen — same goes for the Maps application. The screen itself is actually a bit disappointing as well — the glass screen on the iPhone is far nicer than the plastic one on the HTC Magic.
The Magic doesn’t have a 3.5mm headphone jack — and it’s almost impossible to find proprietary HTC accessories for the phone in brick and mortar stores. I don’t think I’d want to listen to music on this phone anyway due to the sub-par battery life.
Overall, I am disappointed with the HTC Magic. I’m not sure if my disappointment stems from Android or the hardware — but if Google is looking to knock Android out of the park, they are going to have to somehow bring Android up to the level of iPhone in these several areas.
Garett Rogers is employed as a programmer for iQmetrix, which specializes in retail management software for the wireless industry.
See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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