I checked out the HTC Magic at the Tuen Mun Smartone-Vodafone shop. It was obvious that SV has its own agenda on what phone models to push, ‘cos I had to ask one of the sales people there, and he had to go to the back of the shop, and pulled out a working sample from this big drawer containing about 30 different phones.
The phone was nice. The display is as crisp as the iPhone display. The web browser doesn’t feel as quick (in response) as the iPhone, but much better in capability than the Symbian browser on my E71. Lack of a standard headphone plug is PITA, but my E71 is also guilty of this. Lack of multi-touch capability on the OS puts Android at a pretty big UI disadvantage IMO. Battery life is supposed to be very good. The soft keyboard is okay but I’d prefer a good hardware keyboard myself. I think it does Chinese handwriting recognition, which I didn’t test.
I played with the unit for about 5 minutes, and the initial impression is very good.