Diaries of a Nokia Fan Boy

So I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while. I’ve used my Android-based HTC Magic for about a month’s time, and I’ve posted up what I felt about it in comparison to my Symbian-based Nokia N95 8GB. But now I went back to my N95 8GB and have for about a month’s time.

My first impression going back to the Symbian phone was really more of a “It’s good to be home” feeling. But after using it for a while I realised just how much more thought out the OS really is. Not only does it allow for some customization not available on the Android, but it runs better. Its much more stable, running for days, if not weeks, without crashing or having to reboot. There are no major memory leaks, and multi-tasking on it is a joy!

Besides that OS, the hardware is much more impressive. I rarely used my Magic’s camera, but the camera on my N95 8GB has such impressive quality that I never have to think whether I will need a camera wherever I am going. Text messaging on this phone is much more pleasant due to the addition of a hardware keyboard.

I must say, however, that Android does have its pluses, and so does the Magic. For one, the Android market is easier to use than the Ovi Store, even considering that the Android market has a terrible search. Also the applications available on the market are better – I downloaded some music players and, while they didn’t improve audio quality/support, they did add some interesting functionality such as immediate lyrics or song suggestions. At the same time, I really liked how HTC allows you to upgrade the OS via a ROM file. Different OS versions out there come with their ups and their quirks. While I didn’t like the fact that the quirks seemed to be quite large and annoying, I did enjoy being able to install a new firmware when it came out because I know someone had ported it (I am referring to my v20 N95-4 when N95-2 is on v30+).

Since I’ve been using my N95 8GB, Mike has been using my Magic and has found some even more fascinating programs. For example, he found a spectrometer that kept us amused for an hour, playing different songs into it and seeing the visual representation – it was quite interesting to see how much richer a voice is compared to an instrument.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about the direction that Symbian is going in, and whether Nokia should consider other OS’s. To be honest, I think that there is a lot of potential in Symbian, and I hope that Nokia draws that potential out. But operating systems such as Android have already built on that potential and are already available, which will make things much more difficult for Nokia. I think that Nokia is doing well to stand by its operating system, especially considering how stable and efficient it really is, but it won’t be easy to win against the new hot shots on the block.

Also, things I would like to see on Nokia devices:

• Easily and safely exchangeable OS versions (a la HTC phones)
• Much higher support for applicatoins, more so those centered around entertainment
• Smaller, lighter, sexier touch screens (X6 is definitely an improvement)

Well these are my thoughts for a Saturday afternoon,

-Nokia FanBoy

So recently I decided to find myself a good Sense UI (HTC Hero’s version of Android) port for my Magic. The process was pretty straightforward and actually quite simple. I will have to post some of the steps and give my thanks to the appropriate developers, those guys really are amazing! I am using Fatal1ty’s Rogers ROM, v1.4.

I will say right away that the ported OS was a little bit more buggy than the original, so if you’re looking to get rid of those “Force Close” messages, this ain’t the way to do it. Also, it seems to be unable to work with WiFi, and I haven’t tested Bluetooth yet. So again, if those features are important to you, holding off for a bit might be a wise choice. Mind you there are a fair bit of improvements as well, and you’ll see those following.

Home Screen:

Well lets start with the main menu then. I’m sure you’ve seen renders of the screen, or screenshots using the SDK, however since I’m running Win 7 64bit all you get is photos, which should be a nice change .
The home screen is broken up into 7 screens, with the middle screen being the main one. Moving between the screens can be done by moving the current screen left or right, or by scrolling right or left (note that the directions for moving the screen and scrolling are reversed – don’t know why but they are). The screen position is identified by the white line marker just about the menu/phone tab at the bottom.
You start out with some basic configurations, and you have 6 “Scenes” to choose from: HTC, Social, Work, Play, Travel and Clean Slate. Each of the scenes has the 7 screens set up in its own way, with some emphasis on each of the parts. I decided to start with the HTC scene and customize it. Any customized scenes can be saved, and I’m not aware of any limitations.
The screen is populated with widgets, which HTC was nice enough to provide plenty of their own, such as music, weather, stocks, etc. I won’t go over all of them, but the following is basically an overview of the widgets that I use. Note that while HTC have done a wonderful job of making their own widgets, all originaly widgets still work flawlessly.
Starting with the home screen, when adding a widget you can usually choose which one you want to add. For example when adding the Clock widget there are some clocks which display times from different regions of the world. For some, the size also changes, such as in weather, you can add a small weather widget, or one that takes up the entire screen (see below).
Moving to the right, you will see the miscellaneous screen. Here I want to point out the GPS and Bluetooth toggles. You can also toggle Airplane mode, Mobile Network (2G/3G), and Wi-Fi. These toggles are in the HTC Widget menu, under Settings. They work quite well and I find myself using the GPS toggle quite often. Although I suppose what would be more useful is if I could state that program X can toggle Y when Z happens. That would prevent some programs from automatically enabling some settings, but at the same time would bypass some unnecessary steps.

The other widget you will see here is the People widget. I haven’t used it a heck of a lot, but I do imagine it would be useful for many people. The people that go into this widget are customizable, however it would be nice to see an automated, statistics-based method of adding people to the widget. For example, if I talk to some four people more than the rest, then add them to the list automatically.

Next up is the Music widget. To be honest I find the music application included here to be much more useful than the original one, but more on that later. The widget comes in two sizes, and here you will see the full screen one. The smaller one takes up half the screen, and allows the same functionality. Of course, selecting the widget brings up the music player.

The Weather widget is also quite nice. You can add multiple cities and move between them by flicking up or down on the big weather icon. The icons themselves move, and while I haven’t seen the “windshield wiper” from Windows Mobile 6.1 widget, I haven’t been through any rain either . Again, just like the music widget, this too can come in half-size and display the same information.

The Messaging widget is kind of neat in that it displays the latest message from each of the contacts. You can scroll between the contacts by flicking up or down on the message, same as the weather widget. The name of the contact, picture (if applicable), time, and message content are displayed, and you can delete the message right away (by clicking the trash can). You can also view all messages (by clicking the list button) or compose a new message (by clicking the pencil).

The Email widget is almost identical to the message widget except that it gives you more space for the email, and allows you to flag the email right away. As you can see, MS Exchange ActiveSync is fully supported, which goes for contacts and calendar as well.

There are many more widgets available, but I just haven’t had the time to look over all of them. I will, however, note that the Stocks widget seems to be very nice, and displays the stocks quite nicely. I’m sure someone out there has a screen capture of it

Screen Lock:
Although I do not have a screen shot of the new screen lock, I don’t think I like it quite as much the previous one. To unlock the screen you simply drag a tab down the screen. I find myself unlocking the screen without realizing it on a regular basis, since turning on the screen is as simple as pressing any button and then you just have to slide the tab down a tiny bit to unlock.

Music Player:
The music player is a nice improvement over the original one in Cupcake. The improvements are mainly: more touch-friendly interface, some nice UI additions, and a lock-screen addition.

When choosing between listing albums, artists, playlists, etc. you simply slide your finger over the horizontal tab bar (which I am covering with my finger currently ). You could actually click on the icons too, but this is so much more fun. This interface actually reminds me of the home screen slider on the HTC Touch Windows Mobile 6.1 build that I have – makes sense given that its the same company. Actually I’m kind of surprised they didn’t do the same thing on the home screen as this tends to be more efficient, but I guess they wanted a different look.

The artists list is very similar to what you would see on the original music player, except that HTC uses a white background and black lettering, which I find easier to read.

When viewing the playlist, or any list of songs, if the MP3 is embedded with album covers then those will be displayed on the icon on the left. The same goes for the list of albums.
The full list of tabs is: Albums, Artists, Playlists, Songs, Genres, Composers, and Purchased. I don’t really know about that last one, I guess it has to do with DRM, but I know that on my phone it says “No music found”.
Going back to the Now Playing screen for a moment, you will find two icons on the top: left – shuffle on/off toggle, and right – repeat toggle.
The nicest addition to Android, one that I, ironically, did not get a pictures of, is the music controls on the lock screen. When you start playing a song in the HTC Music Player and then lock the screen, the lock screen will show the album icon, as well as previous, pause/play, and next controls. Also, where before the volume controls worked at any time, now the rocker is only active when the screen is on (whether in lock mode or not).

Applications List:
The application list in Sense UI is mostly the same as in Android’s home screen, however here when you close the screen and open it again, you will find that the applications did not move to the top, but stayed in the same position as before. Also, to open this window is not a touch-and-slide motion as in the standard home screen, but a simply touch of the up arrow on the bottom left.

Flash in Browser:
Unfortunately, the flash that comes with the browser does not work all that well. I am not sure what the issue is, however streaming videos seem to not want to play. This really isn’t too much of an issue for me as I don’t really use YouTube all that much, more often relying on SMS or games to keep me entertained. However, I must say, websites in general display very well, I was quite pleasantly impressed. The only down side is that when I go to my online Rogers account, I am unable to download the PDF version of the bill.

Problems:
Since this is a developer build, and not an official HTC build, it is bound to come with some problems. For instance, where before the text messages would time-stamp exactly three hours ahead, now the time-stamp seems to change from 2 to 4 hours behind. Also, I have been having a lot of problems of people sending me text messages that I did not receive. Since SMS is my main mode of communication, this is a big deal for me and I will attempt to get Rogers Tech Support to resolve this issue for me. Also, WiFi (and I think Bluetooth) don’t work. This isn’t too terrible, however I am quite upset that I cannot control VLC with my phone; I was really hoping to play with that application.

Conclusion:
All in all, its an improvement, hands down. I am very impressed with the work the developer community performed with this build and my hat goes off to all of them. While the rom does have a number of flaws, they are counteracted by the improvements brought forth over the old versions. Some flaws are big enough to force people off of this build, however the improvements for others will make this a no-brainer. I will try to get the SMS problem fixed for mine, but will be on the look-out for a new version that will hopefully fix these problems if Rogers Tech Support can’t.

UPDATE:

Battery:
I must apologize that I completely forgot to include the most important improvement of all: the battery life. This one caught me by surprise the most as I did not expect this at all. Not only that, but it doesn’t even fit in with the specs for the Magic and Hero, as the battery improvements in Hero are marginal at best. But after installing this ROM my phone lasts some 20% longer. Granted, maybe half of that is attributed to the mere excitement of a battery life increase, but even 10% improvement is quite large.

Multi-touch Input:
Finally, the added multi-touch support for browser and gallery. This isn’t a major improvement, but it is a proof-of-concept and I think the most that will be taken away by this is that we can now expect 3rd party games and application to provide us with amazing and breathtaking applications for this. As for the browser and gallery, its a nice touch, but I would have rather seen it for Google Maps.

Hope everyone found this helpful, and drop any comments/questions you may have about this.

-Nokia FanBoy

My favourite website to go for reviews just got their hands on the HTC Magic and have posted a full-blown review. The main reason why I like going to the website is because they tend to provide, while slightly biased, very detailed reviews, including extra’s like 360-degree spin, high resolution photos, screen captures, and my favourite – the audio signal quality chart. They also provide highly detailed specs of every GSM phone there is out there, and allow for searching and comparing of phones. They also provide phone ratings, and even links to sellers.

Actually it was the audio signal chart that I wanted to look at most. GSMArena calls it Tolerable, and its exactly what I expected after using it to listen to music – virtually no lows, and good mid to high range, maybe dropping off a little early on the highs. Comparing to the iPhone 3GS, the numbers look quite poor, however when I’m listening to it in my head phones, most songs really are tolerable. I’m sure that those with lower expectation of audio quality would even be pleased with it.

I’m using Ultimate Ears: SuperFi 3 Studio, and sorry if it seems a little like a sales pitch, but the head phones really do sound amazing, especially when you get them for $34.99!

That said, the overall review takes a generally positive light of the phone, probably a little more positive than mine, and compares the phone to the iPhone 3GS, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, and HTC Touch Diamond2. If you’re serious about getting the phone, have a read through the review, its good fun if nothing else.

GSMArena: HTC Magic review: Practical magic

-Nokia FanBoy

One of my readers, atul recently asked me question on upgrading their phone:

…planning to move from Nokia E71 (my 4th eseries phone) and have always used a Nokia since ‘92. Do u think it would be sane to move to HTC Magic or should I wait for E72?

This isn’t exactly a question that can be answered with a couple lines, but I liked the question enough that I decided to actually write a post about this.

Choosing between the E72 and the Magic there are a number of factors you have to consider, first and foremost that the two devices are in a completely different class altogether. The Nokia E72 is an Enterprise-class devices. What this means is that the design of the phone, operating system, and software was all done with the requirements of the business world in mind. That also means that the manufacturing process didn’t compromise on quality, however may not have put too much thought into the physical appearance of the phone (granted, the E71 is the first exception to the latter).
On the other hand, the HTC Magic is a somewhat more mainstream phone. Thus the physical appearance was more important than quality (mine scratched in a matter of days and slightly creaks on the sides).

Another part of construction you have to look at is the input method. If you write a lot of emails, the Magic, or any touchscreen phone, is not for you. At the very least not until they have displays that can morph to have actual physical buttons raise up and provide proper feedback. Of course even then, taking up important screen real-estate for a keyboard will never be as good as having a separate screen actual physical keyboard.

Taking a look at the operating system is also important. Symbian is over a decade old and in that has become extremely stable, even if a little outdated. Android, on the other hand, seems to crash applications on a regular basis (3-5 app crashes per day). At the very least, however, when an application crashes Android and other applications continue running. You also have to keep in mind that there’s a fairly large learning curve going from OS to OS, especially when switching from hardware keys to a touch-centric UI (trust me on this one).
Also don’t forget to consider the applications that you are using on your phone now. Going from E71 to E72 you’re pretty much guaranteed that all of the applications will work. Going to the Magic, however, you will need to find equivalents in the Android Market or the online community, and that can take a large amount of time.

Finally, the features of the phone itself are important. The main one, for me at least, is the battery life. The HTC Magic is severely handicapped by its battery, whereas the E71, and likely the E72 as well, is not.

So what does all that mean for you, my dear friend?
Well just think about what you’re doing with your phone now, and what you will be able to do with your future hone. If you’ve gotten used to the E-Series quality then I’m afraid the Magic, and other mainstream phones for that matter, may be disappointing to you. If you’re connected to a MS Exchange Server then I must tell you that Symbian is integrated much more tightly with it. Also, Symbian has Nokia, Garmin and TomTom mobile GPS applications whereas Android is stuck with just Google maps.
So think about whats important to you, and which phone can better support your requirements. Also, take a look at my post on Nokia E71 vs. E72 (Nokia E72 – worthwhile upgrade?), maybe an upgrade isn’t even really required.
Lastly, consider other phones, such as the Nokia N97, or even other operating systems, such as Windows Mobile.

If you have any more questions just drop me a line and I’ll try to help as much as I can.

-Nokia FanBoy

Hi Everyone!

Sorry took me so long to post again about my experiences with the new phone, however I was away on a vacation trip and unable to take the time to write the review. On the bright side, this gave me lots of time to play with the phone, especially considering most of my time was spent in transit!

I will not be going over many details of the phone, just some key aspects that stand out to me.

Battery:
Ok, I know that everyone will say that battery life has to be taken with consideration for usage, but I’m comparing the battery life to my old Nokia N95 8GB, and I’m disappointed! I mean I wasn’t using the media player, since I didn’t have a headphone adapter, I wasn’t using GPS since I don’t have a turn-by-turn system installed, but then why is it that the battery lasted so much less?!

I understand some aspects of why the battery was low. For example, the bigger screen with the brightness set to 100% does eat up a lot juice. Since the screen is twice the resolution of the N95 8GB it makes sense that it would consume more power rendering the graphics. The fact that the input is primarily via the touchscreen it probably consumes more power than buttons. And of course the faster processor would consume more power. But what about the fact that N95 8GB has a 16M color display, dual CPU’s, and a hardware 3D accelerator? That takes up juice too!

But personally, I think that the main drain on the battery is inefficient code. Just looking at how much my battery life increased when I upgraded my N95 8GB firmware (from v11 to v20) tells me that a large portion of battery consumption is inefficient code.

Screen:
Maybe I’m just spoiled by Nokia’s 16M color displays, but 65K just doesn’t seem to be enough. I mean sure, its color, I can’t see that its only 65K colors, but when I look at a picture on that screen and on my computer its clear as night and day!

On the upside, the higher resolution is nice, and the bigger screen itself is very attractive!

Audio:
It would be unfair to judge the audio capabilities of this device solely on its core audio player performance. To be fair, the Magic does not seem to be placed as a media device, as can be seen by the lack of 3.5mm jack, however I found the sound quality to be decent, at best. The biggest issue is, of course, bass. For someone listening to classical music with little bass instruments, this would be fine, however I like Jazz, Rock, a bit of Pop, and of course, at times, Classical. And the sound quality just wasn’t high enough for me.

What is an issue, however, is a lack of equalizer presets, which do not seem to be included with third party media players. This tells me that media players are only a front-end interface for the same back-end sound “producer”. In lament’s terms: don’t expect third party media players to improve sound quality.

Now, the really bright side to this is the innovative media players available for Android!

TuneWiki automatically downloads lyrics to your songs and displays them together with the song… Synced!!! Of course not all songs are available in their database, and sometimes the words are slightly mismatched, but this is just such a cool feature that I don’t care!

MixZing, on the other hand, suggests songs based on which song you play and what songs you have in your library. When you play a song it automatically creates a playlist for that song and throws in 20 suggested songs, which you can add or delete via a kind of impromptu rating system. The benefit is that the playlists created by MixZing are available from other media players on the device.

*** I was out of town for the last couple days, but now, as promised: ***

Camera:
After being spoiled by my Nokia N95 8GB’s camera, this camera is really quite upsetting. Before I got the N95 I was debating buying a high-end P&S camera, but decided against it after seeing the quality of the photos of the N95. Unfortunately, however understandably, this is not the case for this phone. After all, this is not a super high-end phone, like the N95 8GB was made to be, nor is this a camera centric phone, but it still would have been nice to see a decent camera.

One thing that I would like to see in the future is a better camera interface design. While it is nice to be able to see the entire picture without having to look past icons on the screen, those icons can be very useful. Especially if you know what you’re doing you can greatly improve the quality of the photo, or add an artistic flair to it.

Reception:
I was very surprised by the quality of the reception of this phone, this time comparing it to an old model by HTC: the original Touch (also from Rogers). One would think that a phone’s reception would improve as the manufacturer goes through generations of very similarly featured phones. Well I wasn’t sure what to think of the results…

Driving around the gorgeous Rockies poses a big problem for reception, however a perfect testing ground for comparing the sensitivity of the signal. This would show how well the signal strength will work in places like underground garages, elevators, etc. My expectation was to see a clear winner – either the Touch or the Magic, however that was not the case. As we were driving around sometimes the Touch would have 4 bars signal strength while the Magic had no reception, and sometimes it would be the opposite. Overall I believe the Touch, sadly, won out. But there could be a number of reasons for that, ranging from 3G nature of the Magic and EDGE nature of the Touch, it could be one was more sensitive on some frequencies while the other on others (the Magic did catch the signal sooner when we were entering a 3G area vs. EDGE area).

However, in the city, both phones performed equally well. While the Magic did generally show a weaker signal, neither phone had an issue connecting and keeping a call.

Telephony:
Ironically, this is the one part of my review I am not ready to talk about. Since my main mode of communication is via SMS, I haven’t had a chance to thoroughly review this part of the phone. I did, however, notice some issues of having the audio cut out every now and again, and talking last night the other person complained that the audio was cutting out on their end also. As there are a large number of reasons for this I cannot say if it is an issue yet, and will have to do more talking first.

*** Again, I will add more as I have more time ***

-Nokia FanBoy

So I’ve been using the HTC Magic for a while now, and have had to download some applications from the Android Market. Of course before that I had some experience with Nokia’s Mosh & Ovi Store distribution websites, and Nokia’s Download! application, which I will mention only briefly. Before I get right into it, please note that I am looking at the mobile clients of each distribution channel since, lets face it, who connects their phone to the computer to download content these days.

Well lets begin with the oldest, and now closed, Nokia Mosh. I always felt that while the service was in need of some control, as one would find dozens of different versions of some application you were trying to find, and in some rare occasions you may end up downloading the wrong application. The search function provided with Mosh by Nokia was, to say the least, forgiving. I often received results that only contained the abused “keywords:” line at the bottom of the description, obviously not relating to the application itself.
However, taking all that into consideration, I still enjoyed the service as I was able to find and download whatever application I needed with no restrictions. The only irony in using the tool was that going to the main site from my mobile browser did not automatically redirect me to the mobile version. Considering this is Nokia’s own site the missing feature became quite annoying sometimes.

In comes the “Knight in Shining Armor”: Ovi Store. Or so it would have seemed, only it really did not deliver on what it promised. The application selection is quite limited, which would have been bearable for a while if at least the store functioned well! If we were to compare the number of applications on Mosh and on Ovi Store we would probably find ourselves with a ratio of hundreds to one. The store is basically a mobile-friendly website, however, it is not a user-friendly one. The browser takes a long time to load the photos of each application, and when the photo is not available the entire layout of the page becomes skewed. Every single session requires you to log in in order to download even the free applications, the purpose of which I can not even begin to imagine. And the search has trouble finding even some of the simplest applications.

Android’s Market, on the other hand, is entirely optimized for the handheld that it is running on. It has a large selection of applications without actually repeating any of them for each version the provider uploads. The search capability, while surprising weak considering the major contributor to the platform, Google, at least works, and returns the search results quite quickly. The Market is quite user friendly, and even finds a way to non-intrusively suggest popular downloads. While I haven’t used the application store on the iPhone or any other platform, I feel confident saying that the Android Market is on-par with what a mobile content distribution channel should look like.

This review may seem to give very little credit to Nokia for improving on their existing store applications, however I believe that just like S60 5th, Nokia had a great opportunity to redesign an aging concept and come out with a ground shattering application, but did not. I think the reason behind this is that Nokia is not looking at their competition. After so many years of unparalleled success and market leadership, Nokia forgot how to look behind their shoulder at what the competition is doing, and in that time the competition has done a lot.

-Nokia FanBoy

So this post is a first on many levels. For starters this is the first post I am writing on my computer, since I haven’t found any apps to do so from the Magic. Also, this is the first time I am trying out a Magic! And finally, this is a first post in a series of reviews of the Rogers branded HTC Magic.

I will immediately apologize for the poor quality of the photos, as this is my first review, and it is 3:30am. My future reviews will have better quality photos.

Well why don’t we start with the obvious question: Why?

The answer is really quite simple, I wanted to try out something other than what I’ve been used to for a while, and Android seemed like a logical choice. At the same time I wanted to try out a touch screen device to see how I would like the interface.

Overall:

Well a quick overview of the phone revealed some nice features and some discerning issues:

• Solid construction, with a great weight balance
• Good screen, with sensitive and responsive touch
• Pleasant operating system, considering its still in its early stages
• No 3.5mm jack!!!
• Incoming messages show up as 3 hours ahead
• Short battery life

Well read on for more details on this, but I must say that overall I am pleased with the phone so far.

First impressions:

When I first picked up the phone I was surprised just how small the box was, even though all the same parts as usual were there. As soon as I took out the device I thought of how sleek it looks with that all glossy finish, and the second thought was, naturally, how much of a finger print magnet it is.

Turning the phone on seemed to take for ever, however the initial set up was quick and painless. I was impressed with how little set up is required for this phone. You take it out of the box and you can use it immediately. Being connected to Exchange made it even easier as I didn’t even have to load any contacts.

Construction:

The phone’s consutrction feels quite solid with the exception of that matte gray plastic that runs the entire side of the phone: it creaks when you put pressure on it. The glossy black plastic gives the phone a refined and sleek finish and really makes it look like a toy to get excited about. Unfortunately, it’s already gotten some scratches on the back side, so I’ve already put it in a silicone case and ordered an Invisible Shield to protect it further.

Thankfully the buttons aren’t left out in the construction of a touch screen phone: the press needs just the right amount force, and is confirmed with a confident click. The trackball I’m not too sure about – it seems to really be excess in this phone, and i’ve rarely had to use it so far. However I understand the need to go to it: differentiation. The volume rocker on the side, on the other hand, is not solid and has a lot of play in it, however the play doesn’t feel cheap, simply as if its supposed to be like that.

The port on bottom of the phone is the only physical way to plug into the device. While I’m all for using less ports in the device I do not understand why HTC did not include a 3.5mm audio jack. This makes the phone much less valuable to me as I have to spend money on an adapter so as I may be able to use my favourite headphones with it. And speaking of headphones, the ones that came in the retail packaging are complete rubbish, making my ears hurt after barely 30 minutes of listening to them. I understand the need to save money, but at the very least having the microphone as a sort of extension cord / adapter would have made them infinitely more useful as I would be able to use my headphones right out of the box! This is coming from the remote control / adapter that comes with the Nokia N95, it is extremely useful.

HTC Magic - Bottom/Right	HTC Magic - Top/Left
HTC Magic - Front with Si Case	HTC Magic - Rear with Si Case

Screen:

Well the screen on this phone sort of impressed me. The colors are fairly vivid, however they didn’t really jump out at me as amazing. The resolution is quite nice, however could be higher – HTC Diamond was released by that time with twice the resolution. What is also quite upsetting is that the screen tends to lag a fair bit, especially considering that the Diamond didn’t seem to lag any less (performed by turning on the camera on both phones and moving the phones side to side to see the screen refresh lag).

The capacitive touch screen feels nice – the actions smooth, and the construction high quality. While the hardware should support multi-touch the operating system does not. I do not see this as much of an issue since its not quite as useful as one would hope it to be. The touch screen is quite sensitive and responsive, making it feel even better.

Media Playback:

Unfortunately, the phone lacks in this department. The audio player has nothing in the way of equalizers, and lags a fair bit when dealing with large lists of artists, albums, or songs. The speaker in the back sounds tinny, and becomes useless in an environment even slightly noisy. For example: I used my Nokia N95 8GB to listen to music while in the shower, the Magic doesn’t get loud enough, or give out enough base, to make it audible while in the shower. Much in the same way, showing a video in the mall I had to cup my hand behind the phone to create an acoustic mirror so that the audio could be heard.

Messaging, Gmail and Exchange:

This part really confused me. While the software is nice, typing is easy, there’s a very strange error: incoming text messages are time-stamped three hours ahead! After searching around online I realised that this isn’t really Magic’s or even Android’s fault, and is likely an issue with the provider. In order to solve this problem I had to download chompSMS, which managed to correctly keep track of my conversations, and displayed them in nice bubbles.

I was very pleased with the Gmail integration of this phone, with the exception that I was not able to select not to synchronize my contacts or calendar. Since I do not use my Gmail contacts, having an extra 300% of useless contacts is rather annoying, and the same goes for calendar.

Exchange integration, on the other hand, I was quite pleased with! The emails looked great, even supporting HTML and text formatting. The contacts were downloaded with complete sets of data, including pictures! And the calendar synchoronized perfectly, including repeating entries with some of those having been modified. I should note at this time that I am using MS Exchange Server 2007, as earlier versions may not support features such as contact image synchronization.

Programs:

As I am still getting used to the phone and downloading and trying out software I will need to make a separate post for this, based around Android as opposed to the Magic. I will note, however, that the Facebook app is great, but would be nice if I could leave comments on wall posts, status changes, etc.

Web Browsing:

The browser is quite  impressive, having come from a non-touchscreen browser. However it is upsetting that the browser does not support flash, considering my almost outdated Nokia N95 8GB plays embedded flash without any issues. Besides flash, the web pages look fantastic – paragraphs are automatically resized for landscape/portrait orientation, entering URL’s is easy, and clicking on links is a joy.

The only down side in this, as in most browsers, is the inablity to select a picture and save it on the phone. If I was able to do that then more of my posts would have photos in them.

Conclusion:

So far, I really like the phone. Its got some glitches and some poor design choices, but I like it. I guess we will have to see how this will go on for the next month or two.

The only thing I wish someone could tell me: What is the target market for the HTC Magic? If anyone can enlighten me please do so, as I am really confused.

-Nokia FanBoy

For once, not posted from my phone.

UPDATE:
This post has already been updated and the update can be found here:
Rogers HTC Magic (Android): Days 7-14 (Updated)
A new update will be coming fairly soon, as well as I will start daisy-chaining my posts from now on to avoid confusion.

-NFB

First off I have to appologize for not writing anything in such a long time. I have been extremely busy with work and school and have had very little time for myself.

I did, however, find the time to stay on top of what’s going on in the mobile space, and have found some intriguing news which puts my in a position that I have to make some decisions.
There are basically a number of phones which I would like to try out:

• HTC Magic (Dream is too heavy)
• Samsung Omnia HD (a.k.a. i8910)
• Nokia N97 (or other N/E-series Nokia touchscreen)

This puts me in a bit of a jam because I don’t really know what to get. I wanted to try out these phones because I wanted to see what Android is like, to see what other manufacturers have made of Symbian, and of course to see Nokia’s take on touchscreen devices.

Now the Magic is easy – Rogers recently released it on their network and my upgrade cost is $150, which I could possibly lower by some $50 after talking with retentions.

The i8910 and N97 are a little more difficult, mainly because I’m not made of money
I could wait to see what Rogers comes out with in a couple months, or I could look on craigslist/eBay and pick something up there, and of course i could just find an online retailer and grab it from them. Of course both of these phones are Very expensive, so I will not be able to afford both. And the fact that Nokia is supposed to release 4 more touch screen devices this year doesn’t make things any easier.
Granted, to make them more affordable I could sell the Magic after playing with it, however I’m not one to sell a phone, no matter how bad it is (in fact I still have my very first phone that has a broken screen). So that’s not really an option.

The most likely course of action is going to be to wait two weeks until I have a bit more time on my hands, then pick up the Magic from Rogers (given nothing else changes), and come fall or winter pick up either the i8910 or N97 once they fall in price, or maybe Nokia will have released some new totally better phone by then

-Nokia Fan Boy
Posted from my Nokia N95 / SU-8W combo

Posted by Wordmobi