HTC Magic Goes to New Zealand

The second mobile phone in the world to run under Google's Android operating system, the HTC Magic, will become available for purchase in New Zealand starting with June this year, exclusively through Vodafone’s retail stores, as well as online on the company's website. According to Vodafone's GM of Products, Pricing and Internet, Kursten Shalfoon, the carrier's first Android-based device is expected to become the leading handset in their smartphone range.

“The HTC Magic is innovation at its best and comes with Google's Android operating system which offers users simple and easy functionality with some very cool integration with Google's most loved products. Our smartphone range just keeps getting better. It's very exciting to be the first to bring an Android handset to New Zealand and add one of the best mobile Internet brands to our line up,” stated Kursten Shalfoon.

As many of you might already know, the HTC Magic comes to the market as a touchscreen device that features an easy-to-use interface, offering users the chance to personalize it to suit them best, as well as access to the Internet, and the possibility to download relevant applications, ringtones and games directly to their handset through the Android Market. In addition, the phone also offers a responsive QWERTY keyboard on the touchscreen, which also includes predictive text for fast typing and cut and paste capabilities.

The HTC Magic will come to New Zealand in white and black color schemes, and will feature a 3.2-inch QVGA touchscreen display, accelerometer, support for email options like Gmail, POP3 and IMAP, instant messaging through Google Talk, as well as for other Google applications and services such as Google Calendar and contacts syncing, Google Maps with Street View, satellite view and Google Latitude, as well as support for sharing photos on Picasa Web Albums or videos on YouTube. In addition, the device also includes 500MB of internal memory, as well as a microSD memory card slot with support for up to 8GB of additional storage space.