Screen

Magic comes with a large flush 3.2 inch TFT-LCD touch sensitive screen with 320x480 resolution, which is more than enough to display pictures in excellent quality. We were pretty happy with Magic's touch-screen and it's well worth noting that it doesn't feature a stylus pen, which says enough on the efficiency of touch-functions. Most functions work flawlesly and instantly respond to your fingers. On the other hand, we did ocasionally encounter some difficulties with acessing icons placed next to the edge of the screen. However, if we compared touch-function quality of this device to some of the HDC's Windows Mobile-based devices, Magic's a clear winner. It also comes with an accelerometer, which displays the appropriate picture depending on the position of the phone, and Magic has once again proven to be superior to its Windows Mobile-based siblings.  

Camera

HTC Magic comes with a 3.2MP camera with autofocus. Picture quality is excellent but only in good environment lighting conditions, as this model also comes without flash. This however, should be remedied in the future. For instance, the latest HTC offering, Windows Mobile-based HD2 features a dual-LED flash.








Connectivity

Magic runs at Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE frequencies of 850/900/1800/1900Mhz and HSDPA/WCDMA frequencies of 900/2100MHz. It's capable of 2 Mbps uplink and 7.2 Mbps downlink speeds.

It's worth noting that this phone comes with Bluetooth 2.0 and WiFi adapters. Network connection is excellent, even in closed spaces, and our we had no complaints on sound quality.  


Battery

The Li-Ion battery on our test subject packs 1340 mAh, which HTC's specs say is enough for 450 minutes of usage on GSM networks or 400 minutes of usage on UMTS ones. We were more than satisfied with battery capacity during normal operation (15 sms, 30 minutes call time and about 1.5 hours of listening to music daily), and the phone lasted up to 4 days without charging. Of course, if you use internet or navigation apps, battery life will decrease significantly.










Conclusion

HTC Magic is one of the most stylish phones ever to come out of the company. Apart from the good looks, this phone packs some serious punch – both in functionality and speed.

HTC equipped Magic with more memory than its Touch-series predecessor, which clearly shows on performance sheets.
The lowest priced HTC Magic in EU stands at €275.

Of course, Magic encounters stiff competition on this market. Apart from the iPhone, which sets a nice standard in touch-screen phone comparisons, there are also Nokia 5800 and HTC Diamond 2.

Naturally, dethroning the iPhone will never be an easy task and while it still holds the top spot in touchscreen phones, it also costs twice what HTC Magic will set you back.

Android is a young platform and it still can't properly compete with iPhone's OS, but it's safe to say that will change soon enough. Android is still an Open-Source project and we doubt that Apple's team can compete with the rest of the world, especially knowing that almost all major smartphone manufacturers have jumped or are planning to jump on the Android wagon.

Nokia 5800, for instance, is based on Symbian S60v5, another relatively young platform, but Android showed much better performance. Compared to Nokia 5800, Magic features better looks as well as superior touch functions. Unfortunately, Nokia 5800 is priced at €150 which is almost two times cheaper than HTC Magic.

Hardware and price-wise, HTC Diamond 2 would be the closest thing to HTC Magic-competitor. Despite featuring almost identical hardware, Magic packs a much meaner punch. Windows Mobile does feature excellent solutions, but it seems to be lagging behind a bit.

Bearing in mind the bang-per-buck ratio, Magic would be cozily sitting in the middle. We must admit that using the HTC Magic was great and we'd recommend it to anyone looking for a worthy alternative to the iPhone.