The Apple iPad has set the size of tablet screens at 10 inches, but it’s a new market, and there is still plenty of room for variation between seven and 12 inches. HTC’s Flyer — now with 3G as well as Wi-Fi — comes in at the low end, size-wise. Since it’s very similar to Android phones like the HTC Desire, it feels like an oversized smartphone. If you already have an HTC smartphone and wish it had a bigger screen, the Flyer is for you. It’s a handy mid-sized table that fits between a smartphone and an ultrathin laptop, and you could easily carry all three. But if you want something to use around the house, or to replace a netbook, then a bigger screen would be better. It’s more for road warriors than couch potatoes.
Like the HTC Desire, the current Flyer has a smartphone operating system, Gingerbread(Android 2.3.3), rather than the Honeycomb (Android 3.1) that Google is designing for the tablet market. In this case, it also has version 2 of HTC’s Sense software, which provides an easy-to-use front end.
The Flyer also differs from most Android tablets because it comes with a wireless stylus or Magic Pen: you can write on the screen, either to annotate photos and documents or to make handwritten notes. Stylus operation was common on PDA’s (personal digital assistants) that predated smartphones, such as the Compaq iPaq and HP Jornada, but these had very good handwriting recognition and the Flyer doesn’t. As a result, I’m not sure the pen will appeal to a lot of people, but some will like it a lot.
The Flyer’s 7-inch widescreen provides a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels, which is the same as you get on a Windows XP netbook, and the big on-screen keyboard works very well. However, using a fat finger to navigate websites designed for high-precision mice is inevitably a hit-and-miss affair, and whenever possible, you’ll usually want to run an app instead.
The Android Market doesn’t match the iPad’s app store for volume or variety, but mainstream needs are well catered for. The Flyer comes preloaded with some useful apps including Polaris, a miniature office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program), Evernote-compatible Notes, an excellent e-reader, a PDF viewer, and a subscription movie service called HTC Watch. I added a bunch of free or ad-supported apps including Twitter and Facebook, BBC iPlayer, Google Goggles, Shazam, TuneIn Radio, ScanBizCards and FreeCell(Rainbow Soft’s FreeCell is very good; Softick’s Freecell Solitaire is not. There are other versions.)
The drawback with not using Honeycomb is that you can’t get new tablet-oriented apps, such as the much-improved Gmail. HTC has provided more tablet-friendly versions of its own apps, so you can use HTC Mail instead. However, this will become much more of a drawback when Honeycomb apps proliferate.
Hardware? The HTC Flyer is very solid, having an aluminium unibody, but this adds to the 420g weight: with pen and slip case, it’s not far short of a pound. The screen is bright and clear and, rather cleverly, the Android buttons “move” so they are under the screen in both horizontal and vertical positions. There are the usual two cameras — 5 megapixels for taking photos and 720p videos and a 1.3MP webcam for Skype etc — plus stereo speakers on the back. It has a MicroSD slot, and a Micro USB 2.0 port that’s also used for charging.
Performance is good, thanks to the 1.5GHz Snapdragon processor, but most buyers would probably prefer a 1.2GHz dual core chip as used in the HTC Sensation smartphone. The Flyer isn’t as fast as, for example, the Asus Transformer, but it feels snappy enough in everyday use. It can certainly handle Flash and 720p videos, though there’s no HDMI port to drive a monitor.
All round, the Flyer is a bit of a mixed bag. It doesn’t meet the home tablet spec of a 10-inch screen and Honeycomb, so its main appeal will be to mobile users, and preferably ones with a business use for the pen. It’s also expensive, with prices ranging from about £479 (16GB, Wi-Fi) to £599 (32GB, Wi-Fi/3G). I can’t see it appealing to a huge audience, but it will be well liked in its niche. I enjoyed using it.
