14 DAY TRIAL // I was surprised to find out that HTC, the leading Windows Mobile-based smartphone manufacturer, only managed to come out with three devices, none of them impressive enough. Obviously, following the mild success that G1 had in the past, HTC continues the Android-based series with a new G1 smartphone that features almost the same technical specifications.
The most obvious difference between the two is the lack of a QWERTY keyboard, which is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, this is the reason the new HTC Magic, aka G2, is much slimmer than the previous HTC Dream, aka G1, only 13.7mm compared with 17mm of the latter. Also, HTC doubled the ROM memory of G2, which now features 512MB instead of only 256MB. The battery has also been improved, providing 420h of standby time and 7h and 30m of talk time. The 1340 mAh Li-Ion battery is much better than that embedded onto the G1 (only 1100 mAh Li-Ion).
The rest of the features have been kept the same as the previous G1 model: 3.2 inch TFT touchscreen with 65K colors, accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, miniUSB, Bluetooth 2.0 (headset support only), built-in GPS receiver, Digital compass, built-in 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus. Both devices are powered by the same kind of CPU, Qualcomm MSM7201A 528 Mhz and, of course, run the same Android-based platform.
HTC Magic will be available from Vodafone, thus it has been added dual HSDPA connectivity (2100 / 900). The stylish new smartphone is exclusive to Vodafone in the UK, Spain, Germany and France (SFR) and available on a non-exclusive basis in Italy. There is no official information on its availability or pricing yet.
HTC Touch Diamond2 now embeds a better Li-Ion 1100 mAh battery. Sadly, only standby time has been increased to 500 h; talk time has been lowered to 5h from 5h and 30m offered by Diamond. The new Touch Diamond2 features an incredibly 3.2-inch WVGA touchscreen (480 x 800 pixels) - that's about 0.4 inches bigger than the usual Diamond.
While I didn't have the chance to play with the device, HTC says that the TouchFLO 3D interface has been improved and now features a smoother and more fluid control. There are also a number of tweaks that have been applied to the phonebook (Contacts), in-call screen, as well as the Start menu, which seems to look more iPhone-like. The HTC Touch Diamond2 will be available for customers across major European and Asian markets in early Q2 2009, with broader global availability coming later in the year.
Both HTC Touch Pro2 and Touch Diamond2 run Windows Mobile 6.1, but it is said that they're the only ones that will be upgradeable to the newly announced Windows Mobile 6.5, later this year.
