Airtel launches Android-based HTC Magic

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Bharti Airtel and HTC Corporation announced the launch of India’s first Android powered mobile phone – HTC Magic.

Raghunath Mandava, chief marketing officer, Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel, said: "Being the first to bring the Android powered HTC Magic to India further underscores our commitment to enrich the communication experience of all Airtel users. The HTC Magic presents a powerful mobile internet and multimedia experience that should drive the uptake of accessing the internet over mobile amongst Airtel users.”

HTC Magic is a 3.2-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with a 3.2 mega-pixel camera and comes enhanced with Outlook synchronization, amart dialler, and an onscreen keyboard with predictive text. Airtel customers can also avail utility based applications such as portfolio manager, hello tune manager, weather channel, mobshare, in-mobile search and city search on the HTC Magic.

Jack Tong, vice president, HTC Asia, said, “HTC is proud to partner with Airtel in launching the much-anticipated Android-powered HTC Magic in India. The HTC Magic opens up a whole new world of possibilities for people to enrich and customise their mobile phone. HTC has always been known for its industry firsts and technology advancements, and is thus a natural partner to Airtel.”

For Airtel customers, HTC Magic also allows free data download of 100 MB per month for a period of six months. The HTC Magic will be available at a market price of Rs. 29,990/- across 17 cities - Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Coimbatore, Cochin, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Lucknow, Bhubaneswar and Patna.

Developed by the Open Handset Alliance, a group of 47 technology and mobile companies, Android brings Internet-style innovation and openness to mobile phones and enables developers to create mobile applications to optimise the functionalities of the mobile phone. Android does not differentiate between the phone's core applications and third-party applications, thus providing users with a broad spectrum of applications and services.