HTC Flyer Tablet Review and Price

HTC Flyer Tablet Review and Price. With all of the buzz around Android 3.0, it just about feels like any tablet based totally on earlier builds of the system software has been typecast as clumsy mutants, halfway between telephones and pills. Earlier pills released at end of last year , for example the 7-inch Samsung Universe Tab, were built on Android 2.2 ( Froyo ), and the experience felt more like using an outsized telephone.

Google itself has related that anything before Honeycomb wasn't built with capsules to mind, and indeed, Froyo showed a control interface ( UI ) that had diverse spots of unreliability, and menu placement that was obviously more suited for cell-phones than pills.

And device makers have been coming out robust with Honeycomb capsules, from the Motorola Xoom to the Asus Eee Pad. Even Samsung latterly came out with the updated Universe Tab 10.1 running Honeycomb. With that, it appears curious that HTC would come out with an Android 2.3.3 ( Gingerbread ) tablet. But do not pass up the 7-inch HTC Flyer tablet as another tablet hopeful. The incorporation of HTC's custom control panel, Sense, makes a significant difference between fellow Sense-less brethren, and is testament to HTC's knowledge of what makes a UI intuitive. Sense offers some tweaks and an overall glaze to the Android experience that help bridge the divide between a 'focused ' tablet OS and the phone-centric earlier Android builds. As an example, it includes a few custom applications that try and integrate with preferred services like Evernote. It also offers to link address notebook matches with those found in Facebook, so that users see a unified identity for those contacts. A fast unlock feature is also convenient. The UI permits you to place a couple of often-used icons in the lock screen, and those can be launched by pulling them into a circle, saving you a step of having to open before launching. Or, shifting the circle in any direction unlocks the device and brings you to the home screen.

Totally unique to the Flyer, HTC has additionally bundled a battery-operated pen that lets you make handwritten notes on the screen and make notes on PDF documents or webpages to be shared. The pen will help folks who are endeavoring to transition from written notes on paper, and the killer capability is the incorporation with Evernote. Thanks to Evernote's OCR ( optical personality recognition ) capacity, your handwritten notes have an opportunity of getting digitally indexed, becoming searchable - if your writing is neat enough, possibly. HTC has had years of expertise with its Sense UI, having layered it over earlier telephones running Microsoft Windows Mobile to make those more serviceable. The Taiwanese manufacturer said that its selection of Gingerbread over Honeycomb was so it could put Sense into the Flyer, because Honeycomb would have needed more time before roll-out. This approach also permits HTC to set apart itself in a market that's becoming quite Android-heavy. There's a fixed amount hardware differentiation that may be done, after all. Samsung, too, has adopted this tactic with its TouchWiz interface. It has layered it over its exclusive Bada telephones in addition to on Windows Mobile. It put TouchWiz on its earlier Universe Tab, but HTC Sense seems to have the edge in masking some of Android's inabilities. Overall, the HTC Flyer is a comfy 7 inches, making it straightforward to hold like a paperback book for reading together with to permit thumb typing if you're on a busy schedule and can't place it down to type on.

It's also solidly built, but you do feel the weight at last if you hold it to read in bed. Another smart idea from HTC was to make the home row buttons light up on the bezel, which enables them to 'rotate ' with the device dependent on whether you are holding it landscape or portrait.

At first , the 3G-enabled device was launched at $1,068, making it expensive compared to the $898 Asus Eee Pad Transformer with keyboard dock, or the $888 Motorola Xoom.

But having come out with a reduced price of $899 for the Great Singapore Sale, HTC explains it might stick to this price tag post-sale if user reply is healthy. This makes it competitive with the updated 3G Samsung Universe Tab 10.1, which should come at $848. Additionally , its zippy interface and pen accessory makes the HTC Flyer worth anything against the Honeycomb attack.