Mobile Phone News

Thought that one of the first major Android devices in the world would go away without a fight? Think again! T-Mobile and Rogers have taken two very different roads to extend the lives of their HTC Sapphire-based devices. Big Magenta, of course, has opted to make a hardware tweak, adding a much-needed 3.5mm headphone jack and spitting out a faux wood limited edition; Rogers, meanwhile, rather suddenly updated the firmware with Sense. Oh, but that’s not all — it turns out that Rogers views the Sense upgrade as such a big deal that it’s changing the name of the phone altogether, tacking a plus symbol on the end. Yep, that’s right: meet the Magic+. Apart from Sense on 1.5 with a promise of 2.1 down the road, though, there’s nothing materially new in this place, so don’t feel too bad if you’ve been stuck with one of the plus-less models. No, seriously.

For Rogers, HTC Magic + Sense = Magic+ originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A couple days ago we covered news that Rogers and HTC were plan to upgrade the HTC Dream and Magic starting with an enhanced version of 1.5 in the coming weeks. Unfortunately for Dream owners, the upgrade path for that device ends at 1.5, — as it clearly doesn’t have enough memory to run 2.1 — where the Magic will carry on to 2.1 and — potentially — beyond. We’ve at this time heard that Rogers is looking to offer HTC Dream owners an upgrade path to the HTC Magic, and while the details are unclear as to the when and the how, it seems the price for the hardware shift will be $free. So, at this time the issue will be if an OS upgrade is really enough to push you off a keyboard and onto a touchscreen, so, do fill us in on what you plan to do. Hopefully this all pans out as it seems it’s plan to, and if it does, all we can say is: well done Rogers, golf claps all around.

Filed under: Handsets

Seems that all your cries out in Rogersland have forced somebody to rethink the official company line on updates from OS 1.5 for the Rogers HTC Dream and HTC Magic. The message was simple: there would be no updates for the devices beyond 1.5. MobileSyrup’s at this time heard directly from HTC that there will indeed be upgrades to both devices, with the first scheduled in the next weeks. Bump one will apparently see “a number of benefits for these devices, including bringing the HTC Sense experience to the HTC Magic” though the OS version will stay at 1.5 — in other words, you’ll basically get a current-gen Hero. While that’s cause for celebration, mid-year is when we’ll get to the meat of the tweaks as we’ll apparently see an upgrade to 2.1 for the Magic, but the lowly Dream — due to “certain limitations,” likely meager internal storage if we had to guess — will stay at 1.5. So there you have it, your sets may get better in the near term and much better — at least for some — half way through the year.

Rogers and HTC give up: Magic will see Android 2.1, but Dream gets a pass originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.