14 DAY TRIAL // According to the latest news on the Web, the second mobile phone in the world to run under Google's Android operating system, the HTC Magic, will become available in Singapore in early June, and it will be sold unlocked, unlike HTC Dream, which was tied to an operator, at a price of S$1,048 (US$701.33), contract free.
[ADMARk=1]In addition to going to Singapore, Magic is also expected to become available in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, before the second quarter of the ongoing year is over. The handset will come to the market in two colors, namely white with a silver strip, and black with a maroon strip.
Daminan Koh from Cnet Asia managed to get his hands on an HTC Magic, and took a series of pictures with the handset, only to unveil a feature that some were not expecting to see in an Android-powered mobile phone, namely Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support. Damian Koh notes, “One of the new features on the Magic is support for Microsoft Exchange. We managed to get it to sync with our Outlook e-mails, contacts, and calendar entries with nary a hassle.”
It seems that the Asian version of HTC Magic will be the only one to feature support for Microsoft Exchange, though the lack of it seems to be a great issue with the device, the same as it has been with the first Android phone, HTC Dream, aka T-Mobile G1, especially when it comes to its use in corporate environment.
Unfortunately, it seems that neither the HTC Magic nor the Android will feature native support for Microsoft Exchange, thought there are a few third-party applications like DataViz Documents to Go that include this feature. For the time being, Google has no intentions of offering support for Microsoft Exchange on its platform, and the availability of this feature on the Magic should come from third-party developers, at least this is what a company spokesperson told Cnet.