India Gets its First Android-Powered Phone!

India Gets its First Android-Powered Phone!

Techtree News Staff, Jun 23, 2009 1933 hrs IST

Android ahoy!

A 'little' late, but we finally have it - India's first Android-powered smartphone, HTC Magic.

After months of speculation, Airtel brings to India an Android-based phone, the HTC Magic. The phone is among the 3 Android-based phones to be launched this year. HTC Magic was first showcased at the Mobile World Congress in February this year.

About Android Platform

Android is the Open Handset Alliance's mobile software platform. The Android platform opens up the opportunity for customers to customize their device with multiple mobile applications.

HTC Magic

The HTC Magic offers a 3.2-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with a 3.2 megapixel camera, Trackball with Enter button. It comes with a Smart Dialler and an on-screen keyboard.

The phone weighs 116 grams and measures 4.45 x 2.19 x 0.54 inches.

What's Airtel Offering with HTC Magic

- Utility based applications such as Portfolio Manager, Hello Tune Manager, Weather Channel, Mobshare, In-mobile search and City Search

- Airtel customers to get free data download of 100 MB per month for 6 months

Price and Availability

The HTC Magic will be available at a market price of Rs. 29,900 at Airtel Relationship Centres and authorised HTC resellers across 17 cities.

The cities include Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Coimbatore, Cochin, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Lucknow, Bhubaneswar and Patna.

Timeline

- September 2008 - the first Android-based phone, the G1, was launched.

- Kogan Agora, another one based on the same platform was launched by a company called Kogan Technologies.

- Google revealed Android Dev Phone 1, the SIM-unlocked and hardware-unlocked variant of the G1 phone especially for the developers in many countries, including India.

- Nokia said no to Android - plans a gradual shift towards the Linux platform.

- In February this year, Chinese telecom major Huawei has also announced its first Android-based phone.

- Samsung too will be launching its Android-based phones this year.

- LG is reportedly planning to come out with its first Android based handset later this year as well.

Related Links

Video: Adobe Flash 10 Running on G1

Android G1 Shipping Ahead Of Time

Video of HTC's Android Phone?

Tag keywords

HTC Magic Airtel HTC Magic Bharti Airtel Android

Discussion Board

(3) Comments

pa1

,zz, on Jun 24, 2009 12:18 PM

sad first of all, y only airtel, its not like they are providing the device for redused price with annual subscribtion like in the US, so why just airtel.besides, even 25k would have done fine. 29k is too much.