Android, HTC Magic and Rogers Canada

February 23rd, 2010 by Daniel

For me the excitement of getting a smart phone was something I put off for a long time, not because I had to, but because I wanted too. The blackberry never served an explicit purpose for me and as sexy as the iPhone was I wasn’t about to lock into a huge contract and drop big money for first generation hardware from a company who had never produced a phone before (even though I have been known as an Apple fanboy). So I waited and as I did so Android matured into a mobile OS that could stand on it’s own next to the iPhone.

A friend had the HTC Magic from Rogers and had been speaking it’s praises so I decided to give it a go, and I’ve been very pleased so far. Initially I had flashed a ROM based on the HTC Hero Sense UI from Telus, but then Rogers came out with their own Sense UI update and that’s when my experience really became a positive one. The bugs that existed with the hacked ROM are now gone, and an update to Android 2.1 is forthcoming (which currently only the Nexus One runs) and that will absolutely take this phone to the next level. Once the Nexus One comes to Canada I’d love to get my hands on it and perhaps pass the Magic on to my wife, which would replace her Moto Krazr and help to curb her phone envy.

If you are on the fence as to whether go Android or iPhone, I can say with certainty that Android is the way to go, ideally a Nexus One would be the phone to purchase, but for me the Magic is doing the job handily. As the Android Marketplace expands and the quantity of apps increases the disparity from the iPhone gets smaller and smaller. And the Android Marketplace has all of the major apps that you could want.

The only negative in all of this is my service provider who seems to take customer service as something to be handed off to under-trained and impatient people botched my order so bad that I received the wrong phone on two separate occasions and had my order canceled without my notification. In all it took almost a month and a half from the time of my original order to receive my phone!

But now I have and it was well worth the wait. Who am I kidding, I got it because Arnie uses it!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 10:20 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.