NZ Android Phone News

After a big launch party last week, Vodafone have suddenly withdrawn all HTC Magics - both online and in stores.

More here.

Vodafone have their not-so-magic pricing up on their website now. We’re not very impressed - prices start at $619.00 for a 24 month plan. Yet again, NZ mobile companies are ensuring NZ stays behind the times with mobile technology.

If you’re on a budget, it may be better to wait till the cheaper Chinese models come onto the market…

Vodafone have just launched their HTC Magic treasure hunt called “Mission Magic“. It will kick off on Friday the 16th. There are 20 phones to give away spread around New Zealand and you can subscribe to the clues by texting your city name to 3161.

Progress can be tracked on the interactive Google map which shows when a phone has been found. Any winner will get tickets (including flights) to Auckland for the launch party on the 24th. If you’re lucky, you might get to meet NZ Ben.

The Rock radio station is also giving away phones each day leading up to the competition. Today’s clue was “It’s also a Castle” - the answer being, “Carisbrook, Dunedin” (Carisbrook is also a castle in The Isle of Wight, UK).

The Mission Magic site is http://missionmagic.vodafone.co.nz/

As our previous post pointed out, you can now pre-register for the HTC Magic with Vodafone.

Doesn’t look like anything incredible, but it does mean you get notified as soon as Vodafone have anything to say about it… So register now if you want to be, “…among the first to get their hands on the HTC Magic!”.

We’re keen to hear how much it is - if it’s significantly cheaper than the iPhone then they might be on to something (thought competition isn’t something we’ve come to expect from NZ mobile providers…).

To register, go here.

NZ Ben (aka ben.geek.nz) has done fantastic review of the HTC Magic - Vodafone sent him a model for testing.

He’s done the inevitable comparison with the iPhone which most people are probably dying to hear.

Unsurprisingly, if you’re a regular Gmail and other Google services user, and don’t care about Music, iTunes, etc, or if you are an open source fanboy then you’ll love the Magic. Apparently Exchange integration isn’t brilliant unless you use third party software or IMAP. And shock of horrors, if you are a Google Apps user, then you can’t link this to the Magic at present Update: turns out it can work. Final negative point is the 512MB of memory that comes with it - Ben points out that memory is so cheap these days, why didn’t they chuck in 8GB?

No word on pricing yet, but Ben points out you can register your interest with Vodafone here.
The full review is here.

Not sure how many of you read the latest updates on 3G guy’s blog, but in his farewell announcement he also announced that Vodafone  will be giving away 20 HTC Magic Android phones in 2 weeks (from the 5th of June).

Apparently, “they are going to hide over 20 of them around the country in two weeks time and you will have an hour to find them”.  They will be announcing stuff on The Rock and 3G guy’s twitter account. 

But that’s not all - there’s going to be a mobile geek party hosted by Vodafone and Google in Auckland afterwards - anyone who finds a phone will get two tickets to a flight to Auckland, accomodation and entrance to the party.

No sign of HTC Magic Android phone yet on the Vodafone NZ site but they are doing a big 3G promo at present including the Find the 3G Guy campaign which wrapped up today (his blog is here and his twitter here) as well as a promo for people to send in videos showing themselves using 3G.  

Alongside of that, we have the launch of Telecom’s XT Network.  No sign of Android with these guys just yet though (apparently if you were in Bluff earlier this week it wouldn’t matter - as neither Telecom or Vodafone phones were working).

Anyhow, the Vodafone 3G promo happens to have this rather cool Android promo video on it. Watch and drool:

CNET’s Crave have an interesting article about how slow the take-up of Android phones is. They have a point too - there’s a lot of talk from manufacturers, but only the HTC Magic has made its way to the international market so far….

More here

Been a while since stuff has happened. But the good news is Vodafone is finally launching Android phones in June…

More here

From: NZBen

Looks like the HTC Magic is not just being restricted to Europe.

NZ Herald reports today that the HTC Magic will be sold by Vodafone which is an interesting move considering they are selling the iPhone also.

Telecom has been rumoured to be considering Android for some time now but looks like they’ve been beaten to the post (they should have been faster setting up their GSM network).

More about it at NZ Herald