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A phone that looks cool and has a new operating system is enough to attract the attention of a pro in the latest technology. However, HTC Magic is not something revolutionary, but from this HTC Magic review, you will find out that this phone still promises to be a new experience.

The formidable G1 / HTC Dream needed all the weight it could get to stand out. With a much lighter weight and a more natural look, HTC Magic wants to play by the conventional rules of a touchscreen. Compact, with a distinctive style, decent functionality and with an open-source operating system, HTC Magic seems to keep up with both the smartphone technology and the telephone part. So how can you call an improved platform and a gadget that looks good and it is quite creative? We can say it is neat, but who knows, might have something Magic.

HTC Magic's box is of medium size and it contains only the strictly necessary accessories. We found a a miniUSB cable, handsfree headphones, a charger and a leather cover. The phone is available in two colors, black and white, and HTC chose the color of the cover depending on the color of the phone. I received a 2GB microSD card with my phone.

The phone falls into the normal size range for a smartphone. It has a length of 113 mm, a width of 55.56 mm and a thickness of only 13.65 mm. The weight does not exceed more than 116 grams. It is very comfortable in your pocket or palm.

The design of the phone is excellent. HTC paid a great attention to details. Even if they only used plastic, it is a quality plastic, solid and pleasant to the touch. The surfaces are glossy, but resist to fingerprints very well. The shapes are rounded, making the phone look so good.

The front of the phone is dominated by the 3.2 inch touchscreen, below which there are six buttons and a trackball used to navigate through the menus. Few phones use a trackball, this "enhancement" was a long time characteristic to BlackBerry models. BlackBerry users are delighted with the ease of navigating through the menus with the trackball. Even if your Magic has a touchscreen, you will certainly use the trackball when you want to choose something from a menu. It is fast and accurate.

HTC Magic uses the Android version 1.5 operating system from Google. Google G1 has the version 1.0 of Android, but 1.5 comes with several improvements. Android looks very well, you can fall in love with it as easily as with the iPhone OS. The menus are very intuitive.

What is Android? It is incredibly good, especially considering it was launched last year. After a week with this phone, I decided it was time to quit using Windows Mobile and to switch to Android. It is so good.

An advantage of the operating system is the way you can customize the display of the phone. You have three desktops (three on Magic, Hero has increased the number to 7), the main screen and another one to the left and another one to the right. Here you can put what shortcuts or widgets you want, downloading them free from Android Market. A widget that will show you the exact amount of battery? No problem (there are even about 10 variants). An on / off button for the WiFi, so you will activate the wireless easier? We have it. Even a toggle between 2G and 3G, for those who do not want surprises in monthly traffic. On the Market you can find free programs for almost any of the searches. For example I wanted (and found) a task manager (Advanced Task Manager), a file browser (Astro), a program to take small notes (Note Everything), a feeds reader that can be sync with Google Reader (NewsRob) , a traffic meter (NetCounter plus Date Counter Widget), a widget that will show you real-time weather (WeatherBug), Yahoo or other IM (Meebo or Palringo), Twitter (Twitdroid).

HTC Magic's agenda allows you to add an unlimited number of contacts. You can set many details for every single one, such as phone numbers, address or email. To find a person in the agenda, you will have to press the search button and write the first characters of the name.

Magic knows to work with all types of messages: SMS, MMS and email. You can use the virtual QWERTY keyboard, both in portrait mode, and in landscape mode. Obviously, the landscape mode is better if you have to write a long message. The copy & paste function is implemented into the software of the phone, so you can send email links or text copied from other applications through the SMS.

The SMS and MMS editor is the same; to send an MMS just add a multimedia file in the message.

The email client is great, it lets you sort and search messages by several criteria. If you have a Gmail account, you can easily configure your email (just write in the user name and the password). Gmail also integrates very well in the software of this phone, so it will announce you as soon as you get a new message.

The photos and video gallery are integrated in one application. Browsing pictures and videos is easy and fun. Obviously, you can see them both in portrait mode, and landscape mode.

The music player recognizes the following audio files: AAC, AAC +, AMR-NB, MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC-LC, MIDI, OGG, meaning all popular formats. The music sounds good, but the big disadvantage is that you have to use the headphones that come in the package. You do not have a 3.5 mm audio jack, so you cannot connect your own headphones. If you expected that Magic would have FM radio, you will be disappointed.

Now, in this HTC Magic review, it is time to discuss about the camera. The camera has 3.2 megapixels and autofocus. It can capture images at a maximum resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. As Google's G1, it lacks the flash. That means you cannot take photos in the dark. We have some camera settings: contrast, brightness, etc. The photos have pleasant colors and sharp details.

HTC Magic knows how to record a video, but only at QVGA resolution (320 x 240 pixels) with 15 fps. From this point of view, it is far behind other smarphones, who know how to film at least with a VGA resolution at 30 fps. The video files can be saved in MP4 or 3GP formats.

HTC Magic is a phone made to stay connected to the Internet. Whether you need WiFi or you need GPRS, EDGE, 3G or HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, the phone has them all.

The web browser is excellent, it moves very fast and it renders the pages excellent. The biggest minus is the lack of the Flash support, but Adobe has confirmed that they are working on a version of Flash for the Android OS. The web browser is based on the same WebKit engine, used by Google Chrome and Safari browser on Symbian S60. You can surf on multiple pages at the same time, and the transition between the pages is easy. You can zoom, so the text written with a small font is not a problem. The browser is optimized for touch usage, so you do not need the stylus.

The conclusion of this HTC Magic review is that it is a phone with a nice design, very suitable for a person among who spends a lot of time on the Internet from the phone or who is often using the Google applications.