We managed to get our hands on the HTC Flyer at Yappe Computer, Serusop, and it seems like a good 7″ Android Tablet: an alternative to the older Galaxy Tab. It’s selling for B$859 (cash price) / B$886 (credit card price) for the 32GB model.
Specifications
- 7″ 1024×600 multi-touch capacitive screen
- Stylus for use with the active digitizer screen
- Android 2.3 with Sense 2.1
- 1.5GHz CPU
- 32GB storage (~7GB available for apps, ~20GB available as storage)
- 1GB RAM
- microSD card slot
- 5MP rear camera with auto focus (no flash)
- 1.3MP front facing camera
- Standard micro-USB (no HDMI out)
- Wifi: 802.11 b/g/n
- Bluetooth 3.0
- Audio supported formats:
- Playback: .aac, .amr, .ogg, .m4a, .mid, .mp3, .wav, .wma (Windows Media Audio 9)
- Recording: .amr, .aac
- Video supported formats:
- Playback: .3gp, .3g2, .mp4, .wmv (Windows Media Video 9), .avi (MP4 ASP and MP3), .xvid (MP4 ASP and MP3)
- Recording: .3gp
- Battery: 4000 mAh
- Supports Adobe Flash
(Specifications from HTC Flyer Website, GSM Arena)
Notes on the Stylus
- works in apps that support it otherwise touching the screen takes a screenshot that you can annotate
- cannot be used to ‘touch’ all controls / buttons only digitizer palette brought up by touching the icon with the digitizer (not your finger)
- requires a single AAAA (yes 4 As) battery which I have not seen in shops
- has 2 buttons: 1 highlights text, other erases
Bundled HTC Apps
- Notes application syncs to Evernote and allows infinite vertical scrolling. Allows text input, photo embedding, handwriting annotation as well as voice dictation
- Reader application is a reading app linked with Kobo for in app purchasing
- Watch application allows renting and buying of movies (but doesn’t seem available in Brunei, thus can only watch previews/trailers)
Other Notes
While it is a 7″ Gingerbread (2.3) tablet instead of Honeycomb (3.x, which is the tablet optimized version of Android) it seems to be the better choice at the moment as apps will run on it with the only issue may be the way it looks. Currently is only one 7″ Honeycomb tablet: the Acer Iconia Tab A100 and it was released yesterday. It is the first device to have Android 3.2 which is supposed to provide better support for 7″ tablets compared to the regular bigger 10″ Honeycomb tablets. However there seem to be some force close issues and app incompatibilities reported by This Is My Next and ZDnet (i.e. more work for the developer to fix problems).
On the entertainment side it supports 720p video playback, supports quite a few file formats and codecs but there is no HDMI output unless you get the dock to use with the extended microUSB connector on the flyer. The HTC Watch app is a nice feature but not being available here makes it of no use. For office use, there is support for Microsoft Office documents that allows editing with normal text entry and even the stylus (however, not all file formats are editable). Battery life seems a bit mixed with the Engadget review being impressed by it while TechRadar and CNET UK rated it has having bad battery life. BGR and Android Central give it decent battery life with typical use of 2 days per charge.
Summary
While I wished they didn’t remove the calling ability of the device, the usability of the pen to annotate and take notes is pretty appealing. A good alternative to the Galaxy Tab if you don’t plan to use it for calling. Smaller and more portable than an iPad it is made more for mobility. The main reason to get this device is the active digitizer and stylus combo or if you just wish for a tablet faster than the Galaxy Tab whose age is showing. Nice to see HTC innovate with the Flyer and hope to see more with the upcoming Puccini, their shot at the 10″ tablet category.
