After following the news around Google Android 1.0, I\u00a0decided to wait for the next generation of phones so the small problems would be ironed out. Besides, the HTC\u00a0Dream or G1 had some small disadvantages – for example the short battery life and the ugly design.<\/p>\n
After the release of Cupcake (Google Android 1.5), HTC\u00a0quickly announced the release date for their 2nd generation Android phone:\u00a0the HTC\u00a0Magic which would be sold by Vodafone in June 2009 (in the Netherlands). I was pleasantly surprised that I got an email from a webshop telling me they are now selling the HTC\u00a0Magic, even without a subscription!<\/p>\n
After toiling about it for 2 days I decided to give in and order my first Android phone. The next day it arrived and after taking care to open the box without damaging anything (so it could be returned if needed) I ran into the first bump on the road:\u00a0it is locked to Vodafone.<\/p>\n
A quick call to the shop I ordered it from didn’t help either: “…but it is obvious that it is locked to Vodafone, the brand is stamped on it!”. Apparently, making it possible to order without a subscription is not<\/em> a hint that it can be used with any sim card. But I even called them before placing an order and the bloke that ‘helped’ me did not seem to find it worth mentioning that if I asked if it was sim locked (which it wasn’t) I probably would not want to know that it was provider<\/em> locked instead…<\/p>\n After borrowing a Vodafone sim card I finally managed to start the phone and the first thing\u00a0I tried was testing if the Bluetooth voice-dial and file transfer were fixed. File transfer did not work but I\u00a0can live with that.<\/p>\n Next came the voice dial: I paired the phone to my car kit and pressed the button. The car kit showed “No voicedial” and broke the connection. So my new shiny, 400 euro costing phone that can play music over Bluetooth with a press of a button can’t voice-dial anybody…<\/p>\n After searching on the internet, it became obvious that the current voice dialer in Android 1.5 is cripple (it requires interaction with the screen)\u00a0making actual voice dialing (while in a car for example)\u00a0impossible. So Vodafone just stripped it out completely…<\/p>\n Needless to say, I called the shop where I\u00a0bought it, explained why I\u00a0did not want the phone any more and sent it back the next day by mail.<\/p>\n Shame on you Google for not even supporting basic Bluetooth features in the ‘big’ update for Android and shame on you Vodafone\/HTC\u00a0for not clearly pointing out that the would-be ‘iPhone killer’ is in fact crippled…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After following the news around Google Android 1.0, I\u00a0decided to wait for the next generation of phones so the small problems would be ironed out. Besides, the HTC\u00a0Dream or G1 had some small disadvantages – for example the short battery life and the ugly design. After the release of Cupcake (Google Android 1.5), HTC\u00a0quickly announced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[364,365],"class_list":["post-318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-blog-entries","tag-android","tag-htc"],"views":1235,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=318"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":583,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions\/583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}