I’ve been using my HTC Magic/Android for the past weeks. It’s not true that it is totally Google dependent, but it was made buy Google and the google services are, of course, very well integrated. In another perspective it is very Internet dependent and if you can, subscribe a data plan. Currently I don’t have one but I’m working on that.

I didn’t change any default applications, I tried chompSMS but I didn’t see why it was better than the default one. Besides the colors, I think it’s basically the same thing. All the others are good at least from my point of view and for my usage.

I did install some additional applications:

• A bunch of CurveFish widgets
• TaskKiller free – Lets you close running apps.
• APNdroid – Prevents the phone from connecting to the internet over 3G/EDGE/GPRS
  • It has a problem, it also prevents MMS. I have been in contact with APNdroid developer, Martin Adamek, and the future version of APNdroid will support this (choose if MMS are also disabled or not).
  • I made a simple change on the code to test it and I have a working workaround, I posted the function I changed here. I have been with so little time to make the proper changes to APNdroid myself but here is a working version that does not affect the MMS APNs. Copy it to your SD and use eoeAppInstaller to install it.
• Toggle Settings
• WiFi Scanner
• Astrid Task/Todo List
• OI Shopping list
• eoeAppInstaller – SD apk installer (lists all apk’s in the SD)
• twidroid – twitter client
• ASTRO File Manager
• Babbler Lite for Facebook – full-featured native Facebook client
• EboBirthday
• SMS Popup – shows a popup dialog when a SMS/MMS is received (very configurable)
• ConnectBot – SSH client
• Ndrive
• ShopSavvy – shopping assistant
  • I haven’t really tried this one yet, still waiting for a opportunity.
• Any Cut – Allows to create home shortcuts to anything

Some other apps you may want to consider (they are said to be the best around):

• Snap Photo Pro – Camera App
• imeem Mobile – Streaming Music App
• CoPilot Live – GPS Navigation App
• WeatherBug – Weather App
• chompSMS – Communication App
• Weather Widget
• Sherpa – Location Based App

Of course and as I have commented above, I have been looking into android development. You can read all about that at http://developer.android.com. The android plugin for eclipse is nice and works very well. I only had some initial trouble with the debugger but not a big problem.

Another thing that I haven’t tried yet is WiFi with WAP Enterprise. I’ve been lazy to try it out at my university but I’ll give it a go very soon.

I have also been tempted to change the ROM version from the original to a HERO based ROM, but there are some things still aren’t working so I’ll wait.