Ok, so here's the deal. I had an iPhone (1st gen), loved it! Took it to Russia on a skydiving trip and lost it. I really like Open Source and I don't like being a mindless fanboy so I bought myself an Android phone. The HTC Magic to be exact. The Hero hadn't been announced yet (that happened 1 day after I ordered my Magic!) and the G1 is hideous. Oh and Sammy was taking too long...
As the Magic is Vodafone sim-locked in the Netherlands but not so in the UK, I got mine on e-Bay... No problems there, it arrived with no fuss or hassle. I've been using it for a couple of weeks now and... here's how it stacks up against the iPhone.
IT SUCKS!! ... really, really hard. And that's against the 1st gen iPhone! I guess you've gotta experience the difference to appreciate it, but take it from me, it sucks :)
Ok, so the things that I actually DO like about the phone are these:
- OPEN SOURCE!
- Decent size and shape.
- It's got buttons! It's nice to have a few more than just 1.
- The trackball is a nice feature but you can't set the scroll speed which makes it a bit less so, but still.
- OPEN SOURCE!
Where it loses out on the iPhone:
- Experience: everything takes that little bit longer, it's just not as fast and smooth, it allows multi-tasking but who cares if it then crawls to a halt. The first app you need on this phone is 'Advanced Task Manager' to regularly kill all background crap. Listening to music AND browsing is painfully slow.
- Build quality: I got my phone with a creaky body... I hate that!
- Battery life: it doesn't even last me an entire day of solid use.
- Compatibility (or whatever you wanna call it): I can't open pdf, doc, xls, ppt files without buying and installing at least 2 third-party apps. That's standard on the iPhone.
- Positioning the cursor: maybe I've overlooked something but you don't get the magnifying glass that you have on the iPhone to move the cursor around, which means you just gotta tap and tap and tap until you get it right (hit and miss).
- Screen: looks fine but it's not as sensitive as the iPhone's. When typing fast it regularly misses a key altogether. Especially around the bottom edge that happens quite a bit. The SPACE BAR is on the bottom edge... Itendtousethespacebarquiteoften :(
- Camera: takes a week to start and two days to take a picture.
- No headphone jack and the crappiest head-set on the planet is packaged with the phone... I'm not kidding, the damn thing is hideous, uncomfortable and audio quality is horrible.
SO... there you have it. Why not to buy the HTC Magic (or myTouch). On the other hand... I really like Apple products, but I hate their attitude. They're way too arrogant.
