HTC will unveil its G2 ‘Magic’ Android smartphone to the local media next week, with the smartphone offered exclusively through Vodafone.
It’s been barely three months since the first Google Android smartphone hit out shores, and HTC is already rolling out its second-gen device.
The HTC Magic, which makes its debut to the local media at a Sydney launch next Thursday, ditches the slide-out keyboard of the original
Dream for a virtual QWERTY keypad – along with a better browser, bigger battery, streamlined email setup and Bluetooth stereo, all courtesy of the recent ‘
Cupcake’ update.
The Magic’s curved chassis is a big improvement on the angular and somewhat brick-like Dream, although once you look under the covers and beyond the lack of keyboard the most significant difference is the Magic’s larger battery – a beefy 1340 mAh slab compared to the original 1150 mAh cell.
System RAM is doubled from 256MB to 512MB, while the Magic is also marginally smaller and thinner than the Dream. Early reports indicate that HTC has also added its own software to make the Magic compatible with Microsoft Exchange for syncing emails, calendars, contacts and tasks from a corporate or hosted server.
The rest of the recipe – a 3.2 inch touchscreen, 3.2 megapixel camera, 528MHz ARM processor, Wi-Fi and GPS – remains the same.
Vodafone has snared exclusive worldwide rights to the Magic in all countries where the carrier is present, and has already announced it will release the HTC Magic to New Zealand in June. We’d expect the same timeframe would apply to the Australian roll-out.
The local version of the Magic will run on Vodafdone’s primary 2100MHz 3G network as well as the recently opened
900MHz 3G band. Details of prices and data plans have yet to be announced.