Could it be magic? – My HTC ‘G2′ has arrived!

It was with much excitement and anticipation that my HTC Magic arrived on Saturday. Also dubbed the G2, the Magic is HTC’s second Google phone, and has just been released in the UK on Vodafone. I am mighty relieved to be leaving my old Nokia N95 behind, as the old dear was on her last legs. To be fair, she never seemed to really be comfortable handling video, more than two applications open at any one time, or keeping herself powered for more than a day….anyway that’s the past, let’s talk about the future!

On the looks front the Magic is very sleek, with a nicely contoured white plastic shell and a great big screen. All this plastic makes the phone feel a little on the light side, I’m not saying cheap, but it does feel like it could do with a little more weight when held in the hand. The buttons are on the small side, but nicely arranged – I am a little concerned that the lettering and icons are barely visible and could be worn away and disappear with time, but by then I should be familiar enough with the device (or will have moved onto the next hot model in town).

Now, I can only give a cursory view on the phone’s UI and software for the time being, because Vodafone, bless them, have not sorted my account out yet. More to come on this, but my first impressions of booting up the phone, exploring the homescreen, logging onto my google account over Wi-fi and doing a few e-mails are that;

1. The phone takes too long to boot – frustrating!

2. The screen is great, nice and clear with good resolution, but very smudge prone (not good for a borderline OCD sufferer like me)

3. The homescreen is laid out like a Tryptych, with a landscape view that divides over three screens, it feels a lot more organic than the iPhone. It seems you can drag and drop icons across the whole desktop. I particularly like this attempt to break the classic fixed homescreen paradigm. Cool.

4. Logging into google is very quick – as you might expect

5. Mobile internet over wifi is great, but zooming in and out of PC designed pages seems to require key presses rather than the screen pinching you can do on iPhone – but I may just not have the technique down yet

6. The on-screen keyboard (one of my main fears with the phone) is actually pretty good. I have small hands (and small gloves), so don’t suffer from ‘fat finger syndrome’ and for my money the keyboard is better than the iPhone, the text input UI is slick and generally feels good.

That’s it for now, my account with Vodafone is activated (fingers crossed) later in the week, so I’ll report back on how it handles everything over the network, including using Maps and the Android Marketplace.