The tablet market is heating up and heating up fast. So what makes HTC think that it has what you need when it comes to a tablet? Some have called out some glaring spec shortcomings of the HTC Flyer. Can HTC overcome and weave its magic with HTC Sense? Is their first tablet “quietly brilliant”? We’ve been living with the new 7-inch tablet to find out how it stands against the competition. HTC is carving itself a slice of tablet pie with the Flyer. But this 7-inch device doesn’t run the latest, tablet-centric version of Android, instead using an older version of Google’s operating system. Now that Android is a major tablet OS, with Android 3.0 appearing on the likes of the Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1V, HTC is still staying separate from the crowd.

Hardware

The HTC Flyer’s design shows clearly all the trademarks of the company. It looks like an oversized HTC Legend with its unibody-style aluminum and white plastic insert-sections. It’s 7.7 x 4.8 x 0.52 inch chassis is a little longer and thicker than that of the original Samsung Galaxy Tab, and it’s heavier as well at 14.82oz. Still, that’s because of the metal used in the construction, and the upside is a far durable, more expensive feeling Tablet.

The Flyer’s curved sides are classic HTC and help make it easy and comfortable to handle. You might end up with stronger forearms from the effort of holding it up, but you won’t be causing yourself injury from awkward or annoying ergonomics. Taking it out for a day-long stroll around London, we found this slate a joy to tote around in one hand or stashing it in a pocket. Contrary to any of the 8.9-,9.7- or 10.1-inch tablets that are currently staking a claim as the mainstream’s favorite form factor, the 7-inch Flyer is truly portable enough to carry around without either a dedicated carrying case or some other pouch to slot it into. Even so, HTC has decided to bundle a sparkly white case in the retail package, which is of an above-average quality, fits snugly around the tablet, and provides an all-important holder for the Magic Pen accessory. Some might argue that they’d rather have a cheaper tablet than more goodies in the box, but the Flyer’s case provides an extra layer of protection and a very neat way to transport it together with the stylus.

Along the right edge is a volume rocker, while the top houses the Lock key, a notification light, and the headphone jack. On the bottom is the micro-USB port. The back is mostly metal from than unibody construction. There are two gaps for the loudspeakers, and the camera lens sits in the white plastic panel at the top. To get to the SIM and microSD card slots, you need to pop this top panel off. Weighing just 420g, the Flyer feels fairly light and comfortable in the hand, but with excellent build quality. It’s one of the few tablets that can really stand up to the iPad 2 when it comes to feeling like a premium product. It’s thicker than the iPad 2, but the curved back means it’s not all that noticeable.

Unlike the other Android tablets, HTC has avoided dual-core processors and instead opted for a single-core, 1.5GHz chip for the Flyer. It has a 1.5GHz Qualcomm’s MSM8255 processor, paired with 1GB of RAM. It contains 32 GB of internal storage and can have a micro SD up to 32GB.

Display

It got a simple LCD capacitive touchscreen of 16M colors with 600 x 1024 pixels measuring in at 7.0″. You will definitely enjoy the use of HTC Flyer, it has plenty of brightness, vibrancy, and sharpness to go around. Going outdoors is an especial highlight, as the Flyer dials things up and do a superb job of overcoming natural light to provide with great usability. Web browsing, movie playback, Angry Birds, nothing hampers unduly by the influence of the sun. It’s just a very, very good screen. If you look closely enough, you’ll spot a grid of dots uniformly applied to the entire display, which we’re guessing is there as part of the N-Trig stylus recognition hardware setup. You’ll only spot that array with the tablet turned off, though, as it becomes imperceptible once the lights come on.

Software and Sense v3.0 UI

The Flyer is smaller than the other recent Android tablets, and it runs older software, too. Rather than Android 3.0 Honeycomb, as on the XOOM, G-Slate and Galaxy Tab 10.1, HTC has opted for Android 2.3 Gingerbread, the latest version intended for smartphones. They’ve not left it untouched, of course; HTC Sense makes its usual appearance, though here with some significant modifications to the familiar UI to take into consideration the tablet form factor.

The really important thing to say is that the user experience on the Flyer already works, and very well at that. It features HTC Sense UI version 3.0, which brings an enhanced lockscreen that will display a lushly animated weather update up top and a set of four shortcuts at the bottom. The latter allow instant access to your favored apps, you just drag an icon into HTC’s so-called activation circle and then a couple more animations spin up and spirit you away into whatever app you selected. We keep wondering why more sophisticated lockscreens like this aren’t already standard fare in touch screen devices and HTC’s implementation makes us ponder that question all the more. It’s executed with precision and makes rapid use of the tablet a certainty.

Camera and Multimedia

The trend of finding unsatisfying cameras on tablets continues here too. On the back there’s a 5-megapixel autofocus camera, having 2592х1944 of pixels but lacks an LED flash, together with stereo speakers. The front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera doesn’t do much better, but good lighting will help it produce acceptable results and its quality will be sufficient for video calls or the occasional messing about with the included Snapbooth application.

Video didn’t fare too much better, as is to be expected given the content for it is provided from the same image sensor. Softness is apparent throughout our recordings, making a mockery of the claim that the Flyer records 720p video. It feels more like something a quarter of the resolution that’s been scaled up poorly. As if that’s insufficiently frown-worthy, sound recording is also poor, producing a tinny, inarticulate output that fails to convey much of any atmosphere. On the plus side, that functions as a sort of wind noise neutraliser, since the Flyer’s failure to pick up much of any aural detail also drowns out the wind. On a less silly note, we do very much like the way the Flyer’s camcorder keeps up with motion. If the quality of the actual results wasn’t so poor, we might even commend it for exhibiting so little ghosting or rolling shutter effect.

A 7-inch screen makes it perfect for watching movies and content on the go – it’s a really nice size. Most video codecs are supported and you get to watch them in the standard ways available to you via Sense. This means 3GP, 3G2, MPEG4, WMV, AVI (MP4 ASP and MP3), Xvid (MP4 ASP and MP3) are all supported covering most options. The Flyer supports playback up to 720p and you’ll have no problems doing that. Sharing all this content is easy. You either get to watch it on the screen, or fire it out across your living room to other supported media devices like your DLNA TV or a media player on the network.

When it comes to music there too are a number of options on the device before you have to start enlisting the help of services like Spotify. Amazon MP3 is pre-loaded. The music player has been re-designed to benefit from the landscape view with your playlists and tracks on the left and what’s playing on the right.
Twin stereo speakers might be found on the rear of the Flyer, but this doesn’t seem to affect the sound quality, which can be switched from Stereo to SRS where available. The quality is good, certainly better than we expected, and the speaker placement uses the curve in the design of the back of the player to bounce off the table if lying flat, although at an angle is pushed away from you. The PlayBook’s front facing speakers produce a better sound.

Internet and Connectivity

On the connectivity front you get HSPA/WCDMA, Quad-band, and wireless connectivity in the guise of 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS. Don’t for one minute think that you’ll be able to make a call though. The Flyer might have a SIM card, but like the iPad it is not a phone and HTC hasn’t included phone capabilities. That won’t stop you making a call via Skype or other VoIP services, but that SIM is for data only. The Flyer also has the ability to be turned into a wireless hotspot for up to eight devices. Sensors include a digital compass, and a g-sensor, although no barometer and no NFC.

Battery life is a promised 4 hours video playback. You’ll find that you could get through a good day on a single charge, using it fairly heavily for web applications. Battery will depend on what you do with it of course, but it is better than many the company’s phones.

Other features and Apps

In terms of apps on the device, we absolutely loved the split views HTC has introduced in the browser, calendar and gallery apps. When browsing the web, you can have a little bar up top with previews of all the tabs you have open. This is extremely handy when you want to either reference multiple pages or instruct the browser to go load a couple of items while you’re reading a third. The Flyer’s screen size again shows its advantage here as the preview bar feels just the right size to inform without obscuring too much. Similarly, the gallery app will let you browse one gallery on the right side of the screen while showing you an overview of all available albums on the left, making it easy to skip around in rapid fashion. The calendar does the same thing, providing a monthly, weekly or daily overview on the left and a single day’s agenda on the right. It’s simply excellent stuff. Oddly, both the calendar and gallery work only in landscape mode, whereas we’d infer it’d be easy to stack the two elements that sit side by side in landscape atop one another in portrait mode.

 

 

Detailed Specification

 

  • 2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
  • 3G Network HSDPA 900 / 1700 / 2100
  • SIZE 126.1 x 65.4 x 11.3 mm
  • Weight 420.8 g
  • DISPLAY LCD capacitive touchscreen , 16M colors, 600 x 1024 pixels, 7.0 inches
  • Card slot microSD, up to 32GB
  • GPRS Yes
  • EDGE Yes
  • 3G HSDPA 14.4 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps
  • WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
  • Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP
  • Infrared port No
  • Video 720p
  • Secondary 1.3 MP
  • OS Android OS, v2.3.3 (Gingerbread)
  • Browser HTML
  • Radio No
  • Colors Silver
  • GPS Yes, with A-GPS support
  • Java Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
  • Other Features
  • - Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate
  • - HTC Sense v3.0 UI
  • - Multi-touch input method
  • - Handwriting support
  • - Two sets of touch-sensitive controls for landscape and portrait use
  • Internal  Memory 32 GB storage, 1 GB RAM
  • USB microUSB v2.0
  • CAMERA 5 MP, 2592х1944 pixels, autofocus, Geo-tagging
  • CPU 1.5 GHz processor
  • Messaging Email, Push Email, IM
  • - SNS integration
  • - Digital compass
  • - Google Search, Maps, Gmail
  • - YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa integration
  • - MP3/AAC+/WAV/WMA player
  • - DivX/Xvid/MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player
  • - Adobe Flash 10.1 player
  • - Voice memo
  • - Predictive text input
  • BATTERY Standard battery, Li-Ion 4000 mAh
  • Stand-by Up to 1470 h


By R¤m¥