Don't Call it G-2. It's Magic

LAS VEGAS - Taiwan's HTC makes the first and only Google(GOOG Quote) Android-based smartphone on the market. T-Mobile's G-1 has been pretty successful for everyone involved so far.

But back in February, HTC announced a second Android handset at the Mobile World Congress cellular show in Barcelona. It's called Magic. The first cellular provider to offer the new design will be Britain's Vodafone (VOD Quote). The handset should start selling within the next few weeks.

First Look: New Google Phone

So far, HTC has made no announcement on whether Magic will ever be available for sale in the U.S. I'm hoping it will. Especially since I was just privy to a personal demonstration of the new phone at the CTIA cellphone show here. From what I saw, this is one killer smartphone.

First of all, you should know that the HTC Magic is a lot like the G-1 it makes for T-Mobile. Then again, it's a lot different too.

The Magic is physically smaller than the G-1. In particular, it's much, much thinner because there's no slide-out QWERTY keyboard under the screen. Magic uses an on-screen keyboard like Apple's (AAPL Quote) iPhones, Research In Motion's (RIMM Quote) Blackberry Storm, Sprint (S Quote) and Samsung's Instinct, Palm's (PALM Quote) upcoming Pre, Nokia's (NOK Quote) N97 and others.

Magic measures 4.45 x 2.17 x 0.54 inches and weighs just 4.18 ounces. In its current guise, the Magic is a quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE world phone with HSDPA support for European 3G networks. There's Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a 3.2 megapixel camera inside. Battery life is said to be up to seven hours of talk and up to 11 hours of standby time per charge. A micro-SD memory card can add up to 16GB of extra storage.