![\"HTC](\"http:\/\/daniel.haxx.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/htcmagic.jpg\" "\\"HTC")
<\/li>\nBad stuff:<\/p>\n
- \n
- I’ve had some apps crash on me on occasion. But it’s rarely a problem as they’re restarted automatically for me.<\/li>\n
- Toggling wifi on\/off a lot can sometimes lead to me not getting any data network at all, and I’ve had to reboot the phone to get back to phone-based (Edge\/3G) data.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
On-screen keyboard<\/h2>\n
Of course any and all geek friend I have ask me about how I deal with the on-screen keyboard. I must admit I’m still quite fond of it. Mostly because a physical keyboard makes the phone clonky and it adds physical contraints and wear-points that I don’t like. So the keyboard is a bit small, especially when the phone is in portrait mode, but the suggested completions are fine and I believe I’m already typing pretty quickly on the thing. When I ssh’ed from the phone to one of my servers I did find the obvious lack of cursor keys (to for example navigate an ordinary ncurses-based app or the command line history of a bash prompt) but other than that I really can’t complain.<\/p>\n
Background Applications<\/h2>\n
One obvious advantage compared to iphones is of course the ability to run applications exactly the way I’d like. I can actually run the irc client and then have it in the background while I go browse the web or answer a call or whatever and then at my choice go back to the still connected irc client. In fact when playing with this it feels like a really ridiculous restriction of the iphone.<\/p>\n
Comparing to my SE w550i<\/h2>\n
My previous phone is 94 grams compared to the Magic’s 116. The magic has a much<\/strong> bigger screen. The magic is roughly 11mm wider and 14mm taller. That makes it use 30% more volume (85 cm2) but still fits fine in the front pocket of any set of pants I use. The magic claims a lot longer battery life, but given that it has so much functionality I can’t help to play with all the time I doubt it’ll notice. It’ll more likely run down fast simply because I’ll use it more.<\/p>\n
I’m also pleased that there’s no problem to just plug in the Magic to my Linux desktop and copy\/sync the photos and the videos etc.<\/p>\n
Google Integration<\/h2>\n
I realize some people will feel that the very tight integration with Google and Google’s services is a downside as it adds just another item that Google “owns” in your life. Still, it makes the experience very slick and as a user I get a lot of stuff “for free” as it just connects to lots of things that I already used and had accounts on. So gmail, sharing photos on picasaweb etc “just works”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is my first “smartphone” I’ve owned myself so of course I have nothing else this fancy to actually compare against. I’ve played around with others’ a few times but that doesn’t really count. I’ve owned perhaps 8 mobile phones since I got my first one 1996, and they have all been Nokias and Sony … Continue reading My HTC Magic Review<\/span>