HTC Dream and Magic Android Smartphones Review

Mike Agerbo and AJ Vickery compare the HTC Magic and HTC Dream, and show off some of the cool and unique Android Apps that are available to download.

Mike Agerbo: It’s amazing how much apps have now become a major part of our lives when it comes to smart phone. Obviously iPhone app from Apple really kind of pioneers that whole area but there's a lot of catch up being done by other manufactures. We’re going to look at some of the new Google Android Phones. Google Android is the operating system that Google came out with its open source that any handset manufacturer can use. AJ Vickery: And I think you're right it’s all about the apps these days. Whatever manufacture you are out there and whatever operating system that you're running on the phone you better have some apps for because that’s what's people are buying the phones for. Mike Agerbo: So there are from HTC this is the HTC Magic and this is the HTC Dream. The major difference between these two obviously the size, you can see this one is a little bit thinner. Both have full touch screen but this one also has the slide up keyboard. AJ Vickery: Yeah, so for those folks who do like to have a keyboard and don’t like texting on things like touch screen you have the ability to have a full QWERTY keyboard on here. And again, you know really nice for top tap touch for typing your text messages and stuff like that. Mike Agerbo: The nice thing about this one is that it is in the landscape mode the keyboard so the keys are a lot larger as well as so, a little easier to type in using the little kind of like Blackberry keyboard. AJ Vickery: Definitely. Mike Agerbo: So what makes this a little unique I find this just how the treat apps on it? With the iPhone very restrictive there are a certain things that you can't do when you're writing apps for iPhones. Apple likes to keep it tight reign, Google a lot more open. One of them which are even kind of a settings one called local and essentially by going into it you can actually program when the ringer goes to normal ring to silent. So for example if you are student obviously you don’t want your phone ringer when you're in class. AJ Vickery: And a lot of phones actually have that ability what's the big deal, right. You simply just say, “Hey, I'm in class” you hit silent mode. Mike Agerbo: Yeah it goes on to vibrate. AJ Vickery: Well, this take at one step further if it knows you’re near the school like if you can actually use the GPS it’s going to say, “Hey, when I'm in this area of the campus turn my ringer off.” And that’s the power of this thing. Mike Agerbo: So another feature here that I thought was cool is a whole lot area of augmented reality now. There are a few apps that take advantage of that and basically what it is is it using your GPS location and telling you where other things are around you. An example here is Tweet World. You know a lot of people are Twittering now this will actually when you're holding it up I don’t know how it does this but as I'm looking around I can actually see a lot of the people that I'm following that are Tweeting by their physical location. I can then move up there and I can see what their Tweeted. If I want to I can also click on their head here as well and it will go right to their webpage. AJ Vickery: And the Twitter App is kind of cool but to be honest with you I didn’t see how I would use it. Mike Agerbo: Because you don’t Tweet a lot. AJ Vickery: I'm not a big Twitter but one that I thought was very useful is called the Wikitude it’s from Wikipedea and when you click on it you can do a couple of different things. I'm going to choose to look through the camera and if I point the camera in different directions it will actually show me different things that have Wike’s written about them. I can click on them and I can see the headlines or I can even click to read the whole Wiki entry and if it something that I'm interested in for example if I'm on the trip and I point in the direction of the museum I can actually read the Wiki see if it something that I want to go check out and start walking in that direction. Mike Agerbo: Well again because it’s got the built in compass and GPS it works as you moving the phone around which is pretty cool. AJ Vickery: Pretty then cool. Mike Agerbo: Another example Traffic View, this again ties into all the traffic cameras that around you. AJ Vickery: That’s pretty cool. Mike Agerbo: So here I can cruise around and you can see there's a few different locations I click on one and wow like instantly I've got that traffic cam for that particular mode. AJ Vickery: Yeah, there's no traffic on that bridge so let's go over it. Mike Agerbo: And finally this one was kind of cool one. It was called Shop Savvy. There are a number of these bar code readers one. This is cool for shopping and it’s going to take shopping to a whole new level over the next few years, you know, you're going to a store and you always wondering am I getting the right price. AJ Vickery: Yeah, and if you’re like me always want the lowest price. Mike Agerbo: What I do here is search for a product and I put it over the bar code and it instantly scan it once I've got it in focus. I don’t have to hit any buttons or anything and then it goes up and shows me all the best prices up on the web. And because this thing is location to where because it has built in GPS, it leaves and show me prices of this particular headset around my location. AJ Vickery: Yeah, so if there's a near by retailer that has a couple by flat then you can actually go if you want to walk across the street and buy it there or maybe even better go up to the store manager and say, “Hey, the Shop Savvy says.” Mike Agerbo: Yeah, the guy down the road it also pretends much cheaper. I can imagine store owners are going to be very happy with this technology. AJ Vickery: Probably not but you know what, it’s empowering up the people the, the consumer and the more information we have the better decisions where going to make and Applications that you can get for your mobile the basis are going to help you do that. Mike Agerbo: These are Good Android Phones from HTC they're the manufacture of the of actual handsets, a number of different manufactures will be coming out with Google Android Phones so it’s an operating system that’s going to be growing and growing. And the apps on here very similar to a lot of apps available for the iPhone but because there's a little more flexibility you can also get some really unique one as well.