Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 02 June 2009 14:41
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
Annoyingly, either HTC, Google, the carriers and/or some combination of all three decided to inflict two different models of the Magic onto the world.
3 Mobile’s Magic has 288mb of RAM, as opposed to Vodafone’s 192mb. Both can take MicroSD cards to store music, video, programs and more, but RAM is where programs and the OS can better “think” and process information.
More RAM is always a good thing, right? Either size is more than the iPhone’s 128mb of RAM, but with multitasking a given for the Android platform, 288mb could have been the standard for all…
Vodafone’s Magic will also be able to update its “firmware over the air” (FOTA) as new firmware comes out, and while this has been touted for a long time, it means consumers don’t have to plug their phones into their computers to get the latest Android operating system updates – it just happens automatically.
I like to check the firmware of Nokia phones that people I come across have, and usually find that it’s out of date, thus lacking some of the latest features, and in some cases with the N95, still on original firmware, lacking the battery life, multitasking, camera speed and auto-screen rotation improvements of all the firmware versions that came after it.
So this firmware over the air process will be great for all those consumers that would just never do it otherwise.
Unfortunately, 3 Mobile’s version can’t be updated in this automatic way, but needs to be done the old-fashioned way by connecting the phone to your computer with its USB cable.
While that’s hardly the end of the world and the way most people who update and back up their phones do it now, it’s a shame to see the Magic models split along these RAM and FOTA-ability lines.
Would Apple have done that, or just released one new model that worked the same for all?
What else separates the two models?
Please read on to page 3…
