Taiwan-based handset manufacturer HTC Corp. on Tuesday forayed India’s first handset to operate on Google’s open-source Android OS, namely The HTC Magic, in an exclusive collaboration with Bharti Airtel.

“HTC is proud to partner with Airtel in launching the much anticipated Android –powered HTC Magic in India…..HTC has always been known for its industry firsts and technology advancements, and is thus a natural partner to Airtel,” said Jack Tong, Vice President, HTC Asia.

With this, the country’s customers and the developer community will face up a new arena to interact and develop new applications to Android-powered phones.

Featuring the conventional HTC form factor, the Magic comes in a tablet-shaped design sans a slide-out keyboard.

The smartphone sports a 3.2 inch touch screen display with a virtual keyboard and a trackball for effortless navigation. It also features a 3.2 mega pixel camera, 7.2 Mbps HSFPA-based 3G data access and suite comprising of supported email providers such as Google Mail, POP3, IMAP and Google Talk for instant messaging.

The HTC Magic is also bundled with Outlook synchronization, Smart Dialler and an onscreen keyboard with predictive text.

“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,” said Raghunath Mandava, chief marketing officer, mobile services, Bharti Airtel.

Airtel, the exclusive carrier for HTC Magic in India, will offer many utility based applications such as Portfolio Manager, Hello Tune Manager, Weather Channel, Mobshare, In-mobile search and City Search on the HTC Magic to its customers, said the company.

Additionally, Airtel customers can also avail free data download of 100 MB per month for a period of 6 months.

The HTC Magic will be priced at Rs. 29,900 and will be available in Airtel Relationship Centres and authorized HTC resellers in 17 cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Coimbatore, Cochin, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Lucknow, Bhubaneswar, Patna.