The trouble with the "Magician"

[madkat]

It looks nice - but where's the advantage?
It's smaller and it has a higher resolution camera - but it has less RAM, the CPU is no quicker than the Himalaya's and the Angel's and it's still fumbling around at 320x240!
HTC want to get off their arses and do some more R&D - they seem to have forgotten that the only way to make something desireable to the consumer is to make it better than the competitors and keep the costs low.
They seem to have done very well at it so far - but I fear they'll be overtaken by the likes of HP if they keep producing devices with same or similar specs to one another. The XDAIIs really isn't a great leap forward from the XDA2 - the only extras it has are a keyboard and WiFi, and the battery lasts a little longer. And I have to say I'm very glad that it's not been called the XDA3 - as some members of this forum suggested, it is only really an XDA2.5!

Of course, this could be a very-much-likely-to-fail attempt to secure business in other areas. Yes, the Magician is a PocketPC and a phone, but it's still bigger and more expensive than the i-pod - and has only 3.2% of the storage capacity! All the same, it's advertised as a music playing device. You can pick up a little USB MP3 player for a fraction of the price with four times the storage capacity, or an iPod for half the price with a 20Gb hard disk. In other markets, they really aught to be looking at a complete landscape solution rather than a half-baked portrait system if they hope to pick up business from those who are put off by the price & lack of connectivity of, say, the OQO 1 (www.oqo.com)

Speaking of storage - I picked up a pair of 1Gb SDIO cards on eBay for around £50 (~72€) each! :D

[SlayerX]

HTC actually makes the HP units and also does the Treo 600 series units. Apart from RIM, they have no competion in these devices (as most other competing units are also prduced by them).

[Anonymous]

It looks nice - but where's the advantage?
It's smaller and it has a higher resolution camera - but it has less RAM, the CPU is no quicker than the Himalaya's and the Angel's and it's still fumbling around at 320x240!
HTC want to get off their arses and do some more R&D - they seem to have forgotten that the only way to make something desireable to the consumer is to make it better than the competitors and keep the costs low.
They seem to have done very well at it so far - but I fear they'll be overtaken by the likes of HP if they keep producing devices with same or similar specs to one another. The XDAIIs really isn't a great leap forward from the XDA2 - the only extras it has are a keyboard and WiFi, and the battery lasts a little longer. And I have to say I'm very glad that it's not been called the XDA3 - as some members of this forum suggested, it is only really an XDA2.5!

Of course, this could be a very-much-likely-to-fail attempt to secure business in other areas. Yes, the Magician is a PocketPC and a phone, but it's still bigger and more expensive than the i-pod - and has only 3.2% of the storage capacity! All the same, it's advertised as a music playing device. You can pick up a little USB MP3 player for a fraction of the price with four times the storage capacity, or an iPod for half the price with a 20Gb hard disk. In other markets, they really aught to be looking at a complete landscape solution rather than a half-baked portrait system if they hope to pick up business from those who are put off by the price & lack of connectivity of, say, the OQO 1 (www.oqo.com)

Speaking of storage - I picked up a pair of 1Gb SDIO cards on eBay for around £50 (~72€) each! :D

No bells ringing on those two points there? :-) Basically you just stated that for a piddly 50 bucks, this thing becomes 1GB MP3 player - and that's in additon to being a full-fledged PDA and mobile phone. And still no bigger than vanilla mobile phones.

IPOD is a music player, but with this kind of range of capability of the "Magician", the IPOD reall starts to look like and old carthorse. Even where the IPD is going (displayig photos) the "Magician" can do that ith a better and bigger screen.

One could really argue that you are unduly downplaying the importance of this kind of device and this is where the market goes from here on in. I'd suspect that whatever follows the "Himalaya" will stick with this form factor and just load load on power and cababilities.

[skagen]

That was me posting above.. Login didn't work and it turned up as "guest".

[sandyind]

Guys
I dont know what the JAM is advertised as, but I went ahead and bought one last week and I just love it.

THe form factor is just right, the screen isnt as small as we would like to think it is - in fact I havent noticed any discomfort from the smaller screen.

Okay its not different in specs from the other devices, but this one just fits into your life unobtrusively - with the Qteks (both 1010 and 2020) as well as my first Pocket PC phone (Sagem WA3050) it was difficult to keep track of all the things you had to carry. Suddenly, life has become so much easier with the phone fitting very nicely into a belt pouch no larger than that for other mobile phones.

I am glad I made the change to the JAM, and the only cribs I have are that the build quality isnt as good as the earlier pieces - it feels really plasticky sometimes - and I wish they'd stuck to the 1010's design for the SIM card because I switch cards quite often and it is quite a chore with this new unit as the battery cover doesnt come off as easily as it did with the 2020.

And yeah, I would have preferred built-in WiFi to a 'megapixel' camera. Dump the camera, give us WiFi...

I think we're going to be seeing quite a few devices in this form factor now - EVERYONE who's seen the JAM wants one.

Cheers
Sands

[Bman]

Yes, the Magician is a PocketPC and a phone, but it's still bigger and more expensive than the i-pod - and has only 3.2% of the storage capacity! All the same, it's advertised as a music playing device. You can pick up a little USB MP3 player for a fraction of the price with four times the storage capacity, or an iPod for half the price with a 20Gb hard disk. In other markets, they really aught to be looking at a complete landscape solution rather than a half-baked portrait system if they hope to pick up business from those who are put off by the price & lack of connectivity of, say, the OQO 1 (www.oqo.com)

iPod 20 GB for 299,00 Euro the only thing it does is play music.
Why would I need 20 GB mp3 on my body?
BTW I paid 479,00 euro (without contract) for my Magician....

I think the iPod is a fashion statement just like the first iMacs.
Only those iMacs where shitty computers and the iPod is a nice mp3 player.
(and as all Mac-thingies way to expensive)

BUT to compare the iPod to the Magician is plain silly.
I can do anything with my Magician. (even swop the accu!)
Or scan barcodes. (www.flicscanner.com)

Offcourse we all want a device the size of a matchbox with all the gadgets packed in.
I would like a 21 inch 1600 x 1200 display beamed from that matchbox on the wall
and a keyboard beamed from that same matchbox on my desk.
A 300 Terra byte disk and a zillion gigahertz proc inside!

In the mean time why don't you buy a Magician and see for yourself what it can do right now.

[tc08]

Why am I getting the feeling that the magician is way too expensive in Sweden? My eyes almost popped out when i read that it is 479 € in your country.

I paid 595€ which was in a cheapstore, the other one i looked in took 659€!

:/

It really is a great device though, the size made me buy it, I can have it in my jeans pocket just like any "ordinary" cellphone. The only bad thing is that I got a dead pixel and I really hope they will replace the unit because it's purple and in the middle of the screen :/

[plantagoo]

Hi!

Maybe you should buy the MDA compact (same as iMate Jam) in Germany for around 400 EUR. Even with shipping to "somewhere" in Europe it'd be cheaper. Of course you need to flash an english ROM to it - or learn german... ;) :D

I really didn't know that we're sooo cheap here.

Greetings
plant

[tc08]

Is it really 400 euros? You must be kidding me!

[hype]

i bought one for 459€...

EDIT: http://fonez.de/pd1101545991.htm?categoryId=27 <- 439,64€

attention, the site is in german!

[plantagoo]

Hi!

No - I'm not kidding.

The cheapest price I was able to get was 397 EUR excl. shipping (but including german VAT which is 16%).

Just check out http://www.geizhals.at/de and search for MDAcompact - the cheapest price at the moment is 426 EUR (incl. VAT, excl. shipping).

Proof: http://www.geizhals.at/deutschland/a130814.html - as you can see the first 2 shops are rated quite good.

Beware: Site is in german.

Greetings
plant

[www.rzr.online.fr]

my first Pocket PC phone (Sagem WA3050)

Hi, I have the same device, It seems that it is build by HTC too
Any linux hack experiences on it ?

--
http://rzr.online.fr/q/xscale