I was lucky enough to get a fancy new phone during the holidays to replace my I’ll-ring-only-when-I-wanna hacked iPhone. Several friends of mine raved about the HTC Dream and, hey, it was an Android phone so I went for it. Not the day after it was ordered and on its way than I discovered that Rogers/HTC decided, against earlier promises by salespeople, were keeping the phone forever at the 1.5 firmware. http://www.iwantmyonepointsix.com/ has the best summary of events in this post. What a pain? The fact that the announced barrier to the updates were the ugly and, for most people, useless Rogers customizations felt like a kick in the teeth.

Even though Rogers has sort of announced that there will be a limited-time exchange system for Dreams users looking to go to the Magic, I decided not to wait. Those of you that read the announcement post above may have seen my comments and already know that I am sending the Dream back and will get a Magic before the expected run on it. Checking my contract I am within the 15 days and, fortunately, under 30 minutes of airtime used so Rogers could not deny me the switch. They tried, of course, but the stats and regulations were on my side for a change. Tomorrow it goes in the mail and I hope to get an ETA on the Magic. I initially went for the Dream over the Magic mostly due to the physical keyboard. It was an awful, awful keyboard and I’m presently grateful to be on my iPhone with the on-screen replacement. Oh, please let the Magic not suck :(