Google Ion (HTC Magic) Review

What we liked:
The Google Ion (a smartphone cousin of the HTC Magic/T-Mobile MyTouch 3G [USA]) has a svelte, appealing design with a good-looking display and tactile controls with simple to operate interface. Stereo Bluetooth, flawless assimilation with Google apps, quick download access, Wi-Fi and a wide range of customisation on top of excellent call quality with really speedy 3G make this great.

What we didn’t like:
The Google Ion is unfortunately deficient in full support for Outlook-syncing and also lacks a standard 3.5mm headset jack. Sadly, video quality is irregular, camera editing [like other phones of this type] is limited and some refinement is needed for its HTML browser interface. Customising your personal-organizer is limited too and not all applications have the landscape keyboard available. The camera annoyingly has no flash and lacks a mirror for self-portraits.

Overall:
The performance of the Google Ion is rewarding and its stunning design with excellent interface outweigh the few minor picky issues that might otherwise detract from the potential of this Android device.
Spec: Band/mode: W-CDMA 900/2100 / GSM 850/900/1800/1900; OS provided: Android; Talk time: Up to 450 min.

The Google Ion is effectively a Magic with some cosmetic enhancements, sharing many of the features that G1 has and is to include the Android 1.5 ‘cupcake’ update.
Design and Interface
The Google Ion is a touch-screen-only Ion sporting a slim profile, with a shiny skin in blue/black sheen. It’s got visual and tactile appeal and is what you’d imagine an Android phone to be. Measuring in at 4.65 x 2.19 x 0.65 inches [or 11.81 x 5.56 x 1.65 cm] and weighing in at 4.09 ounces [or 115.95 gms], the Ion feels robust and secure and is compact enough to slip easily into your pocket or bag. The 3.2-inch fabulous touch screen has a clean, bright HVGA display [480x320-pixels] that you can personalise with your own choice of wallpaper and adjust the backlighting and brightness.

The home screen consists of three side-by-side panels, which you can customise so that your selection of short cuts gives you instant access to those related applications and you can remove or add to the default icons as you please.

The responsive touch interface is sensitive to flicking and dragging to adjust the speed of selection and scrolling though it doesn’t have a mutlitouch interface for pinching to zoom and with the capacitive touch screen you can only use your actual finger, fingernails and styluses don’t work.

At the base of the display pressing a tab pulls up your main menu, showing the complete set of application icons and features in a clean arrangement with no busy animations or fussy graphics. Scroll up or down by simply dragging your finger. You close the menu merely by pressing the tab again. When pressed, a Google Search bar located on your home screen at the top will open a complete keyboard, in vertical mode. A small microphone beside the search bar opens the voice search feature.

Beneath the display are located the only physical controls: the previously mentioned Menu control, Home button, back button, Talk and End/power keys and Google Search shortcut key, surprisingly uncramped although they’re quite close together in a small area. The navigation trackball, being a satisfying size and having space around it makes it easy to use. Pressing it straight on selects menu options and icons.

The virtual keyboard changes depending on the feature you’re in. As previously mentioned, the Google Search keyboard appears only in the vertical mode. Luckily, the applications for messaging, e-mail, and browser offer a landscape style keyboard with much more room. For changing portrait to landscape keyboard tilt the phone to your left (only the left) and let the accelerometer do its thing. A single tap permits switching between the alphabetic keyboard and the numeric/symbol keyboard.

You’ll find the Ion’s volume rocker on the left spine and the microSD card slot behind its battery cover. There’s only one Micro-USB port at the base of the handset to be used for the USB cable, charger and whichever wired headset. Here’s when we wish for a standard 3.5mm headset without resorting to an adapter or using Bluetooth’s headset.

Each contact you have in the Google Ion phone book will hold 8 phone numbers, 4 e-mail addresses, 1 IM handle, 1 postal address, 1 company/organization name as well as notes, which is pretty good. There’s a facility to save your callers to groups as well as assigning them one of their 52 polyphonic ringtones. On top of this you can store a further 250 names on to the SIM card.

The Ion has the usual everyday essentials like a calculator, alarm clock, calendar, text and MMS, and also includes a speaker-independent voice dialling function. If you wanted to avail of things like to-do lists or world clocks you would probably have to set them up through the apps, don’t expect to see them up front. It’s also possible to sync your contacts and Google calendar.
The whole point of a phone that offers more than talk and pics is the facility to access sites like YouTube, which the Ion does and users will be delighted with the USB mass storage available, syncing and Wi-Fi provided by the Google Ion. Handy too, is the ability to integrate Google Maps with GPS and of course, Google Talk. Google Ion’s music player won’t win any prizes for cutting edge technology or increased capability; there are the basics in that album art is present though the features are unfortunately limited to simplistic playlists and shuffle, the ubiquitous repeat and something called ‘airplane mode’, presumably this means you can use the music payer on board an aircraft without interfering with the aircraft’s electronics and won’t get busted by the pilot. If you have the knack, load your own selection of music on to the Ion or make a purchase from Amazon’s MP3 store.

You can make the most of the Google Ion by browsing the Android Marketplace where you can download apps, both free and paid. It’s quick and quite simple to use though you need to be aware that the Android OS will only allow you to store applications on to the internal memory alone. That could make things a bit tricky for you if you have a lot of stuff you want to save to the memory as the Ion is limited to its 288MG RAM/512MB ROM, therefore you’ll need to track any available storage closely.

Courtesy of Cupcake 1.5 update, Google Ion can offer autopairing and stereo Bluetooth, which appears to be problem free and works well; video recording and also video playback, though like the camera (as mentioned earlier) it lacks editing options but in its favour it is intuitive to operate and there are two quality formats from which to choose. Cupcake also includes bundled widgets on the home screen, capability for video uploading to YouTube, photo uploading to Picassa, a one-touch access to contact cards from your call log events, Web browser copy and paste, the capability of picture use in your favoured contacts menu, searching within Web pages, tabbed Bookmarks interface and finally (at the moment anyway) a user dictionary for routine words, and some user interface tweaking.

Viewing photos is easily done with the readily accessible Gallery app and although you need to be a bit careful to avoid fuzzy or blurred shots, the photo quality is overall pretty good with little image noise though colours might possibly be brighter.
The Ion’s full HTML browser makes scrolling around a pleasure particularly as the accelerometer permits seamless switching between the two modes, landscape and portrait. The onscreen icons allow zooming in and out so that you don’t need to dig through countless menus. If the Ion had a multitouch interface that would allow easier zooming, [like the iPhone] having to tap on the top portion of an open Web page in order to enter a new URL with the multistop process is tedious (press the menu button then select “go” then type in the URL then press “go” again).

Messaging options are still similar to G1. You get your native Gmail app andGoogle Talk as well as access to most of the POP3 accounts but complete support for Microsoft Exchange Server is still short of the mark despite industry promises that such capability is available for the Ion. It does allow you to use the browser and Outlook Web Access (OWA) for checking e-mail, however it’s not slick and therefore being so longwinded is quite off-putting and as the Ion doesn’t apparently offer Outlook syncing for notes, contacts, or calendar; those who had hoped to have their office in their pocket, with the Google Ion, will be sorely disappointed. Lacking full IMAP4 support continues to be the Android’s biggest flaw. Google – get on the ball!

When tested in San Francisco via the T-Mobile service [Google Ion is a quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) world phone device that also supports T-Mobile's 3G network] the call quality was absolutely fantastic. The phone had a strong signal and conversations were crystal clear with voices sounding natural, neither background static nor interference coming from any other electronic devices impinging on the auditory quality of the call. The phone’s volume level might need to be a little louder, noisy places require you having the sound turned up full – but then that’s the problem solved, so it’s not a major issue and normal situations proved quite satisfactory.

Those receiving calls were pleasantly surprised and were sometimes completely unaware that it was a cell phone from which we were calling. Like the call makers, the call receivers had difficulty hearing when the phone was used in noisy places but that was their only complaint. When using automated calling systems there was no problem in understanding the bulk of the time, which is on a par with the expectation of even landline calls. Calls made using the speakerphone were comparable to other cell phones – usually quite decent, not as good as regular voice calls and requiring careful listening but not with too much trouble and having to speak either a little louder or closer to the phone for the benefit of the person on the other end in order to be heard clearly.

When tested with the Samsung SBH-600 stereo Bluetooth headset the Ion had fine call quality.
T-Mobile 3G connection turned out to be lightning fast on most occasions and under most circumstances. AT&T’s connection penetrates further into buildings than T-Mobile 3G’s connection, but once found it should be good. YouTube videos and Google Maps were a little longer to load, though as results go, reasonably satisfying.

The Ion’s processor performs magnificently, responding quickly to commands when opening or closing any applications and showing no lag time when you’re navigating menus – without any freezes or crashes to the system.

The quality of multimedia was variable. As long as you used a wired headset or Bluetooth the music quality was decent but any tunes played over the phone’s single external speaker sounded tinny, much like you hear on any other cell phone. Don’t expect miracles from the video; quality is merely passable with recorded clips looking pretty washed out and any fast movements appearing fuzzy or blurred. YouTube videos appeared so pixelated it seemed hardly worth the effort of calling them up.

The Google Ion should give 7.5 hours of rated talk time for GSM and slightly less for 3G – 6.6 hours time. Promising a standby battery life of 17.5, Google Ion has a digital SAR of 1.22 watts per kg according to the FCC radiation tests.

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