Mobile-wise, I'm from the past. Is not that my Nokia is 3 years old, has no colours, no camera, no browser, no WiFi, no nothing, the problem is that it has dust between the screen and the plastic cover and it plain sucks.
I've been waiting for quite a long time for an all-in-one device that should enable me to browse, email, listen to music and take some pictures of my drunk friends, no rocket science required. The obvious choice would be the iPhone, but I'm so sick of Apple's closeness that I just can't think about it (
rejecting an app on the AppStore because a top-less in page 3, WTF?).
So, I've been waiting for the HTC Magic, also known as the G2, an Android-based device that promised a lot. Today I popped by my local Vodafone store to see it in action and left happy. It's slim, light, the screen is responsive and the Internet plan is
only 30 quid a month with enough texts and minutes.
Came back home and started looking for comments on the Internet, and that's when the disappointment began. Being based on Linux, you would've thought that it would come with software for synchronizing it in Linux, right?
WRONG. The
HTC Sync software requirements are:
** Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) or higher or Microsoft Windows Vista
** Microsoft Office Outlook 2000/2002/2003/2007, Windows Address Book (Outlook Express), or Windows Contacts
Not even Macs for fuck sakes. The alternative for Linux is
SynCE, but I just don't fancy expending hours reading blogs and forums to try to make it work.
Let's move on, what about the music? What capacity does it have? Answer:
512mb. Yeah, that's right, you read it correctly: 512mb. You can, however, expand the memory by using microSD cards. Ok, not nice but not a huge deal, I can buy a 16gb card anywhere for 40 pounds. But, oh, wait, what about the headphones?
HTC ExtUSB™ (11-pin mini-USB 2.0 and audio jack in one)
That means no standard 3.5mm jack, you have to buy from HTC yet another stupid cable when you have another thousand headphones already.
I don't know, maybe these issues are not as big as they look now, but while I was coming back from the shop I was a happy geek thinking "I could buy it tomorrow" whereas now I might wait until June when new Android devices are expected from other manufacturers.
I hate companies.