The “Break it Down” Blog

Speculation has been flying around the web for months now as to which of the HTC phones is going to become the platform for the T-Mobile “G2″ — or rather the follow-up to the popular T-Mobile G1 (Video Review).

Back in December or January the general opinion was that the G2 would be based on the HTC Touch HD device that was only going to be launched as a Windows device in the UK — leaving the US market open to penetration via another exclusive contract between T-Mobile and HTC if they desired.

For the most part it made sense… the specs on the HTC Touch HD were awesome (on paper), sporting a 800×480 “high def” screen for a mobile device on a slightly larger 3.8″ physical screen — the few reviews of the device we saw online showed a screen resolution that was so high, it actually made most things hard to read. Besides that, we were concerned that the already poor G1 battery life would be widdled down to about a good solid 17 mins of run-time if T-Mobile launched the G2 on the Touch HD with that huge screen.

Fortunately (or unfortunately if you liked the wicked-huge-screen) it is looking like the HTC Magic is set to become the “G2″ for the T-Mobile network.

With an almost identical specification list compared to the G1, the Magic will provide a very close hardware “drop in” for the existing software running on the G1. The one physical change on the phone is the removal of the physical keyboard and the replacement with a virtual one:

Also given the really short dev cycle from the G1 to the G2, the expectation that Google/T-Mobile might have time to do some serious modifications to Android to get them on a previously Windows Mobile device (the HTC Touch HD) being really unlikely, it makes the belief that the Magic will become the G2 even more likely.

General consensus seems to be that T-Mobile is coming in with the G2 not as an upgrade/replacement to the G1, but as an alternative to the G1’s thicker form factor and physical keyboard with a thinner form factor and virtual keyboard… almost trying to pick-up the iPhone users out there:

That’s a fairly significant shrinkage in form factor and definitely appealing to me (an iPhone user), but there don’t seem to be any other physical changes in the device besides a higher res camera (3.2 mp) and that also includes continuing the damnable design decision of providing no headphone jack on the phone either:

You still only have the mini-USB connection at the bottom and the Bluetooth connection for stereo headphones. However, for users of the G1 or folks that read enough reviews, my biggest complaint with the T-Mobile G1 was it’s battery life. If your only option here for a music device is still over Bluetooth, let’s hope that the smaller form factor and time to revise the software and hardware has given HTC and T-Mobile a chance to refine the battery life situation with the HTC Magic/T-Mobile G2 or else that will be another feature that doesn’t get used because it nails your battery life in half.

Android Community put together a hands-on video fo the HTC Magic if you want to take a look and learn more:

In addition to the hands-on video, Android Community put together an in-depth look at the device as well if you want to check it out.

Picture Gallery