kri8it Advertising Agency | Web Development | Graphic Design | Garden Route | South Africa

So i finally got the new HTC Magic and have been working (playing) with it for the last two weeks, and as far as first impressions go, this was had a great one!

The first thing that I noticed was of course the general feel of the touch screen and the scrolling. When the phone first starts up you are presented with a main screen, which I will refer to as a desktop. What I thought was a very nice feature was that there are in fact three desktops. On to the left, and one to the right; and with a gentle flick of the thumb to either side, the desktops elegantly slide in and out of view. The next thing I did was add widgets to my desktops. You can add, remove and create widgets/shortcuts on your desktops to provide easy access to the features most important to you.

One thing I was also looking forward to test was the HTC Magic’s web browsing. And again I was pleasantly surprised with the look and feel of browsing the web. And just to top it of I was connected to the office wireless ADSL router, which for a guy like myself that sits near a router 90% of the time, is a must have.

One of the coolest, yet simple, features I have come to use is the global back button. As you navigate through the options and features of the Android OS, you can get quite lost, but where ever you are by one click of the back button and you seamlessly navigate back the way you came. It might not sound like much, but it has been extremely useful in the two weeks I have been using the phone so far.

The phone came with an application called Open Market, which is a substitute for the official Android Market which is not yet available to us here in South Africa. From Open Market you can get a couple of very cool apps for your phone and the community is growing. Applications available include a facebook apps, twitter from your phone, FTP apps and Many more. Some other applications that come with the phone include the Gmail and Google Talk. One of my favorite applications is Gmote. Gmote turns your Google phone into a remote control for you PC. There is a little application you install on your PC and the app for your phone and you are good to go.

Over all I am very pleased with the HTC Magic and will keep on looking into new applications and features. My next project will be writing my own Android application. I have a couple of good ideas but have not quite decided which one to do yet. Stay tuned…