HTC Magic gets manhandled

HTC Magic gets manhandled, is really quite sexy, I argued, when the T-Mobile G1 was launched, that it wasn’t the perfect phone. You may well remember. The design was a bit… well, not that pretty, and despite the Android operating system, I wasn’t a massive fan of the phone. However, you may also remember that I said the G1 wasn’t a make-or-break device for Google Android, and that it was future phones that were actually the exciting ones to look out for.

Phones like the second HTC Android phone, the HTC Magic.

Well, thanks to Engadget Mobile, we now have some more pictures of it being manhandled, and my incredibly accurate prophecy is coming true, ’cause the HTC Magic is really quite lovely. The main reason for it looking so much better than the G1 has to be the fact it’s keyboard-less, being more akin to the HTC Touch HD in design. And that means it’s thinner. However, they’ve also changed the surface texture, giving it a glossy finish, instead of that ever-so-slightly odd matte finish on the G1.

Overall, the reason I like it so much is because… well, it feels like a modern phone design, whereas the G1 always felt a tiny little bit like an old design they’d taken out of the ‘not used’ bin, and applied to the first Google Android phone.

Oh, and that sliding screen on the G1, the way it used to kind of swing out, not slide in a straight line, always got on my nerves for some reason…

Of course, in terms of software between the two, they’re both functionally identical, except for one big difference, in that the HTC Magic runs a new development called ‘Cupcake’. Or, to us mere mortals, it has an onscreen keyboard, with the makers having realised that a phone without any way to enter text and numbers is a bit rubbish, since the G1 didn’t have a software keyboard, and neither did ‘pre-Cupcake Android’.

All in all, then, I reckon the HTC Magic (and you just know the one in the pic is begging to be called the Black Magic… now that’s a cool name…) is a much more enticing phone than the G1. I’m not quite as excited about it as I am about the Palm Pre, and I’m nowhere near as excited as I am about the Sony Ericsson Idou, but this is definitely one to keep an eye on!