Hasta La Gadget!

HTC and Google are getting closer to perfection with the new Android G2, the HTC Magic. Nice finish, great form factor. Check out our video, including the obligatory comparison with Apple’s iPhone, and hands-on impressions:

The bad news first: Apart from my gripes about the user interface—which are still there—there is one but. A big BUT, bigger than Ramona’s, the planetary lady with accidental moustache who serves the bocadillos down at one of the fair’s restaurants: The software keyboard. On this first touch, the keyboard felt cramped, probably a result of the screen size, which is smaller than the iPhone’s—which is the obvious soft keyboard reference, since it was the first one to implement a finger-touch software keyboard.

In addition to that, there’s an additional user interface problem, this time having to do with perception: Instead of popping up above your finger—like in the iPhone so you can clearly see what you pressed—the keys appear on the sides. They flash quickly as you press them, and I found it extremely distracting. They said that they put them on the sides not to obstruct the view, but knowing the over-the-key implementation in the iPhone’s software keyboard, it doesn’t make much sense. Furthermore, when you are typing with one finger only—like I often do—you will be obstructing the view of the flashing key with your finger. The reason: When you type on the right side of the keyboard, the flashing keys appear on the left. When you click on the right, they pop out on the left.

Other than this, the rest is great. There’s a new Google Mail feature to delete or classify mail in bulk, as well as a faster camera, which now can take video—which obviously means you can play back video as well. The rest of the interface and features is what you already have in the Android G1. However, what really steals the show here is the hardware itself.

HTC has got a very smooth phone, which feels great on your hands and in your pants’ pockets. While it’s sightly thicker than the iPhone, the narrower, rounded body, and weight makes it feel the same size. For sure, a lot less bulky than the G1, which looks like a brick next to this. And as you have seen in the shots, the final HTC Magic is quite pretty. Have no doubt: This thing alone will make many consumers put up with the less-than-ideal software keyboard.

Overall, the first feeling is that we got a potential winner here. If they can manage to make the software keyboard better, Apple will definitely have a formidable enemy in the Android G2.

Vodafone has taken the HTC Magic out of their big red hats in their MWC 2009 press conference. The rumors were true: You can see the fabled Android G2 from every angle after the jump.

For sure, it is lot prettier that T-Mobile’s G1. Here are the specs:

Processor
Qualcomm® MSM7201a™, 528 MHz

Operating System
Android

Memory ROM: 512 MB
RAM: 192 MB

Dimensions 113 x 55 x 13.65 mm ( 4.45 x 2.17 x 0.54 inches)
Weight 118.5 grams ( 4.18 ounces) with battery
Display 3.2-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with 320×480 HVGA resolution
Network HSDPA/WCDMA: 900/2100 MHz, Up to 2 Mbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps down-link speeds
Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
(Band frequency and data speed are operator dependent.)

Device Control Trackball with Enter button

GPS Internal GPS antenna

Connectivity Bluetooth® 2.0 with Enhanced Data Rate
Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g
HTC ExtUSB™ (11-pin mini-USB 2.0 and audio jack in one)

Camera
3.2 megapixel color camera with auto focus

Audio supported formats AAC, AAC+, AMR-NB, MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC-LC, MIDI, OGG
Video supported formats MP4, 3GP

Battery Rechargeable Lithium-ion battery
Capacity: 1340 mAh

Talk time:
Up to 400 minutes for WCDMA
Up to 450 minutes for GSM

Standby time:
Up to 660 hours for WCDMA
Up to 420 hours for GSM
(The above are subject to network and phone usage.)

Expansion Slot microSD™ memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)
AC Adapter Voltage range/frequency: 100 ~ 240V AC, 47/63 Hz
DC output: 5V and 1A
Special Features G-sensor
Digital Compass

I like the new Windows Mobile 6.5 interface, specially the new home screen, which is brilliantly executed. Running on the new HTC Touch Diamond 2, everything looked smoother, cleaner, and matched the iPhone’s lick factor.

While everything seems to have been touched up, simplified, and polished to no end, what really makes this version of Windows Mobile 6.5 isn’t the new, revamped browser—which uses the engine deployed in 6.1 but feels a lot faster and has a good new interface—or the honeycomb start screen—which I don’t find particularly impressive—or the cleaner UI designed for one-finger operation or the speed or the touch gestures.

To me, what really makes this new operating system great is the new home screen, combined with the lock screen. The lock screen doesn’t look very good aesthetically—somehow, the elements don’t appear tight enough—but it allows you to see what’s cooking in your digital life with just one glance. Turn the screen on and you will see whatever pending alerts, mails, calls, short text messages, or any other element that requires your attention. No need to get deeper into the phone applications. From there, if you want to drill down, just slide-to-unlock the notification and you will be taken straight to the info.

Once you unlock your phone, you are taken to the home screen. This is the true jewel in the operating system: A simple list of categories which let you access information without having to get into the phone applications. It sounds like the lock screen, but from here you can get deeper into the information itself. Here’s how it works:

When you slide your finger over the list, it scrolls like it’s passing through a visor. The visor transforms the text line into the information itself, so if you go through “text”, it will show you the last received text message. Once you are looking at that, you will effectively have access to all your SMS messages right on that screen: Just swipe your finger like passing the pages of a book and it will change the text message. The same happens with all the other categories. There is even a custom “Favorites” category, that would allow you to navigate through whatever you want to put in there, from weather reports to Messenger’s messages.

Then you have the start menu, which is accessible through the now-obligatory Windows flag start button, which must be present in all Windows 6.5 cellphones. Microsoft calls this the “start experience.” I call it: “about time something makes sense in your damn phones.” The start page shows all your available applications displayed as icons in a honeycomb. You can scroll up and down the honeycomb to start apps. No more start menu. The honeycomb is supposed to make it easier to see the icons and click on them. It works well.

Of course, Windows Mobile 6.5 is not perfect. I doesn’t seem to support multitouch, for example. However, it’s a huge leap over the previous fugly versions, which were completely unpalatable. If it fulfills its promise, this one will make Windows users think twice before getting an iPhone or an Android phone.

From this first touch on, it looks like Microsoft is back in the game. They don’t have the upper hand yet, but they are clearly waking up. We will see what happens and how deep these changes really are once it gets released.

As you can see in these videos, the Sony Ericsson Idou’s is extremely smooth and elegant. I want it. Seriously, I want to lick it more than I want to lick Beyoncé’s underpants. Portrait mode:

Check it out in portrait mode.

I got some quality time with a Garmin Nuviphone G60, riding around Barcelona in the back of a jet-black Mercedes limo. My hands-on impression: This smartphone-meets-GPS-meets-media-player feels like a winner.

I don’t know what it really is: A cellphone that is a GPS or a GPS that is a cellphone. Of course, the cellphone has everything you can expect from a such a device these days, including a 3-megapixel camera (with a real shutter button, like it should be) and a music player, everything tied to the GPS. This seems to be the main point of the Garmin G60: Everything revolves around geo-location.

Physically, the Garmin G60 has a good size: A good feeling on your hand, thicker than you-know-who, but light and comfortable. The thing is made to be integrated on your car dashboard—it comes with a cradle with a suction cup—but it works in your hand as a smartphone just fine.

The first thing I noticed was the complete lack of buttons, except for volume and camera shutter on the right side. On the front, there are no physical buttons whatsoever, just a nice, colorful 3.5-inch touchscreen.

As you can see in the video, the Linux-based operating system is quite agile and appeared solid, although the full HTML browser stalled forever trying to load a page-which is probably a fault of the 3G connection rather than the G60 itself, even while it is still a beta prototype.

The interface seems polished, it feels fast and responsive, very bright and clean, with colorful icons. It’s centered around three main icons, which I’m sure are the ones Garmin wants to emphasize: Call, Search, and View Map. Call and View Map are quite straightforward, with Search giving you several options, from consulting the six million points of interests—already pre-loaded with the North America or European maps built-in the G60—to the on-the-fly Google local search application. This section feels very much like one of their previous GPS, giving you access to Favorites, Contact, or Recently Found addresses, and allowing to visit or calling any place on one click.

On the side (or bottom, if you are in landscape mode-the Garmin G60 has an accelerator to know this, although it didn’t feel very sensitive while I was trying it) you can see a scrolling list of icons, which gives you access to the other features of the G60, from the camera to the web browser to the Ciao! geolocation based social service to widgets like weather. While the main three buttons can’t be changed for the ones in the side list, the whole user interface is well organized and easy to use.

My impression from the hands-on is that Garmin has made what they know to do best—a GPS—and they combined it with a 3G smartphone is a smooth way. The result is a nicely balanced unit that has the advantage of having everything you expect in a GPS and all the features you expect in a modern smartphone, all under an easy to use interface.

We will give you a more extensive verdict once we get a final unit, which is supposed to arrive in the first half of 2009.