Android & me experiment: using HTC Magic as a default phone - day zero

I am a huge fan of mobile phones with full QWERTY keyboards. It all started with HTC Wizard back in 2005, then HTC Hermes, HTC Kaiser, then I've fallen in love with Blackberry-style form factor and followed with Samsung i780 to finally end up with excellent Nokia E71. I've been using E71 for more than a year now, and all my true fans know already that me sticking to a single mobile for more than a quarter must mean that I have a swine flu or something. Basically, Nokia E71 - despite some very annoying issues - is the best mobile phone I've been using so far. Really.

Anyway, sometime last May I've been lucky enough to win a brand new, unlocked HTC Magic in Vodafone's Twitter Hunt competition. Yay! That happy event came spot on time, as I've already been thinking to get my hands on some Android device, possibly by getting G1 phone. So thank you very much, Vodafone UK, that was an ideal gift. ;) The only issue with the prize was a complete lack of qwerty keyboard, but hey - you can't complain against a giveaway, can you?

After using my HTC Magic for couple of months as a secondary device, mostly for web browsing, GMail checking etc., the time has come to try it out as a default phone that would replace a true workhorse, Nokia E71 that is. Basically, the plan is to use it for a few days (a full week is a target, but I don't know if I can cope that long) to find out how Android OS replaces Symbian in daily usage, and also how much I'll miss a qwerty keyboard, well - any keyboard, to be fair.

Expriment has started today, Sunday 2nd of August 2009, around noon. So far I can already tell that Magic's battery didn't survive until 8pm. I knew it has rather poor battery, but being unable to supply the power for a full day isn't a good sign. To be fair, I've been fiddling with device a lot today, including some intensive web browsing over 3G in order to keep up with Polish speedway league live results. :) Anyway, the real test begins tomorrow, as soon as I hit my daily home&work routine.

Stay tuned.

PS. Forgot to mention one thing. My Magic has already lost its virginity, as I've flashed it with the custom-cooked ROM from well known and respected xda-developers.com forum. The custom ROM doesn't bring that much difference from stock ROM, however it's rooted already, which opens an opportunity for 3rd party software solutions like Bluetooth file sharing, setting additional memory swap space on SD card and couple of other things.