Could it be magic?
As expected Vodafone has unveiled its first handset based around Google's open source smartphone operating system Android at MWC 2009 today.
The Magic will be made by smartphone handset specialist manufacturer HTC. From this Spring it will be available exclusively to Vodafone customers in the UK, Spain, Germany and France and available on a non-exclusive basis in Italy.
Other markets are expected to follow. For some reason it's white in the UK, France and Spain, black in Germany and both colours in Italy.
It has a 3.2" QVGA touch screen display plus a trackball and navigational buttons. There's the expected Google Mail and Google Talk pre-installed as well as a bunch of other Googley things.
From the press release, however, it's not clear what, if any, unique selling points the HTC Magic has. Vodafone's not even first to market with Android; T-Mobile having got there months ago.
Patrick Chomet, global director of terminals at Vodafone, said: "Following our joining of the Open Handset Alliance, we have worked very closely with HTC to bring this cool new phone to the market. Our customers want to access a wide range of the most attractive mobile devices to help them make the most of their time - the HTC Magic helps meet that need."
Pretty limp stuff really. A quick look at the Vodafone site for the Magic reveals things like GPS, camera, MP3 player, etc - it even mentions "Touch screen" twice! - but nothing jumps out that you can't already get elsewhere. We urge readers to have a look for themselves and tell us what we've missed in the HEXUS.community.
