HTC Flyer Review

evolutionqy7

Right so I've got myself a demo unit of the flyer. So will be posting a review here. Only got it for a day, so ill try to do as many test as possible. If you want something tested ask below

So far It's been very impressive. I wasnt expecting anything good out of it. But HTC Sense for tablets really does the good trick to turn this into a contender with the rest of the tablets out there in terms of usability. If your an app person I dont think this is for u as some apps dont work great. Though HTC Sense gives ya a lot of features that would otherwise be needed from apps

adrian522

It seems very expensive for a 2.2 device.

emo72

is this a tablet? should it not be running honeycomb instead of gingerbread? is it the same size as an ipad?

justsomebloke

demo of it running onlive from engadget

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/02/onlive-outs-universal-wireless-controller-seamless-facebook-int/

justsomebloke

emo72 wrote: »

is this a tablet? should it not be running honeycomb instead of gingerbread? is it the same size as an ipad?

due to the fact that Honeycomb is non customizable HTC didn't want to run with it AFAIK as they wanted to keep a similar sort of user experience across all there android product lines

Bluefoam

Joe the Santa wrote: »

due to the fact that Honeycomb is non customizable HTC didn't want to run with it AFAIK as they wanted to keep a similar sort of user experience across all there android product lines

It'll get honeycomb in June. HTC wanted to guaruntee a good user experience, so they refused to push honeycomb out.

adrian522

emo72 wrote: »

is this a tablet? should it not be running honeycomb instead of gingerbread? is it the same size as an ipad?

Its not even Gingerbread, its Froyo. I wouldn't buy a phone with that version much less a tablet.

evolutionqy7

Its gingerbread. 2.3.3

By far I have to say its a most complete experience for a person who likes using facebook/twitter. Needs email good browsing and great battery life. I do have more but I'll leave the rest for the full review. The thing I liked the most that it fits into my suit trousers or track suit bottoms as well.

I was planning to write it up today but I'm so tired after work. So tomorrow

One thing I will say its a good tablet. It certainly is alot better than the image I got from reviews online. But if your an app person this might not be for you at this stage. Most apps I got from the market weren't optimzed for higher resolution. So it looks crap. I'll post an example later. Some do work. Some just don't. Some games don't optimise as well to the display

Nolimits

evolutionqy7 wrote: »

Its gingerbread. 2.3.3

By far I have to say its a most complete experience for a person who likes using facebook/twitter. Needs email good browsing and great battery life. I do have more but I'll leave the rest for the full review. The thing I liked the most that it fits into my suit trousers or track suit bottoms as well.

I was planning to write it up today but I'm so tired after work. So tomorrow

One thing I will say its a good tablet. It certainly is alot better than the image I got from reviews online. But if your an app person this might not be for you at this stage. Most apps I got from the market weren't optimzed for higher resolution. So it looks crap. I'll post an example later. Some do work. Some just don't. Some games don't optimise as well to the display

You'd better not still be tired, there are some people waiting to read that review

evolutionqy7

In general i was quite pleased with the tablet for what its meant for. And for an average user that wants something small to go on the internet in the evening on the couch or needs something smallish to travel around while having access to internet and email on the go.

Now the biggest reason why i liked the Flyer more than Xoom so far is that its more productive.



The 7 inch screen provides a farly comfortable holding position to type in and was able to write a good article on it without my hands or thumbs getting sore. Also the pen provided proved quite joyful and handy. Though i still dont understand why couldnt they allow someway to use it as a capacitive stylus to actually operate the UI. The styles operates with 1 AAAA battery which is lol funny since i never seen a AAAA battery in Ireland. So lets hope carriers and CPW will start stocking these, though i imagine since the pen would be using a small amount of power it should last maybe half the time a TV Remote does.

I found the pen to be quite accurate. Tried to draw some stuff on it and it worked out farly well. Once you touch the screen with the stylus, no matter what app or location your in the Flyer will instantly take a screen shot of what your looking at and allow you to mark the bits you like or highlight stuff. Basically having like having a piece of information on a piece of paper and writting stuff all over it and marking the bits you need. This has proved quite useful for me.

As a note taking device HTC Flyer is extermely useful. As i said in portrait the device is easy to type on. HTC Flyer notes app is great for taking simple notes. It also allows you to sync them with evernote
In the notes app your allowed to type. Add picture, audio, files, live recordings to it. Which for a person in college, work meetings would be quite useful. Admit it not everyone can write or type fast so you can write and record as you go the info you need on one device.

Display

Ech. Its a brilliant display i brought it outside on the nice warm and bright Thursday and had and had no problems what so ever seeing whats on the screen with sun shinning straight at the screen.

But you just wish it had higher resolution. Sometimes in the browser you would have to zoom in to be able to see the text properly. Same goes for the UI. In some parts. Especially while tablet being horizontal you can see pixels which isnt something you want to see on a high end tablet device. But if your an average user your more than likely not even notice it. Im just picky

Size Does Matter

My 3rd most likeable feature was the size. It fits in my suit trousers as well as my cotton tracksuits bottoms which is handy when you need to put it away and just have nowhere else. Obviously might not fit in everyones but just proves a point that the 7" tablets will be alot more portable than the 10" ones.

The smaller screen also proved to be easy to navigate as you hand had to cover alot less real estate to touch something.

Though my biggest dislike was the huge amount of wasted space with the big bezel. Not sure about ye guys but im a fan of small bezels where they make the device look more slim and seem like they used the advantage of the devices full size. Though i pressume this was increased because you have buttons in portrait mode as well as in landscape and camera.

Though i still hope for a smaller bezel in the future models. And i predict this will be the case since the


The colour reporduction was more than satisfying. While me operating between Omnia 7 SAMOLED display and back to the LCD on the Flyer i didnt notice or feel colours being washed out.

Hardware


Hardware is very solid as usually from HTC with the unibody construction. Though one bit annoyed me was the cover where the MicroSD card and Sim card goes in. The cover for me proved extermely difficult to remove, and i felt scared of breaking it everytime i had to open it. But suppose for an average user i dont think will be a problem unless he will be swaping around MSD cards or Sim Cards all the time.

The tablet edges are slightly curved in landscapes and make it quite comfy to hold it for a long time. So in general build quality is very high and i cant pick on anything beside the cover for the card slots which just seems flimsy

Though the device first feels a bit heavy when you pick it up the first time you get used to it and it didnt seem to make my hands feel tired after holding it for a few hours browsing the internet.

Camera wasnt stunning by any chance. It proved to be making lots of noise in daylight picks. Was pointless taking them in dim light as the pictures were just horrible. Not having flash didnt help either

Stereo Speaker werent bad. If the volume is near the max it will produce nice rich sound. But on Max you will still hear your ears ringing from the trebles and bass it cant produce to the full. Though watching a few clips on youtube turned out to be more than satifactionary audio experience as long as you dont turn it up the whole way just about 3/4 would do


Performance

In my experience sometimes Android has a tendency to lag between homescreen transitions, especially with HTC Sense + Live Wallpaper. Now the Flyer doesnt have a dual core processor. But its clocked at 1.5 Ghz and by all means not once slowed down or showed any glitch, lag or other sort of non sense. When i was playing around with the Xoom even that with Tegra 2 had slight lag at times. Especially when switching tasks. But the performance is great i have to say on it. I had live wallpaper on all the time and screen transistions were always smooth and the way it should be, which is pretty good considering . I didnt have a chance to test any graphics intensive games cause my mobile broadband is too slow to download any HD games or nor could i care benchmarking it cause i do feel that numbers dont always show what really matters. Ill get to why i didnt even try later

Battery Life

I was actually quite surprised how good the battery life was. I got approx 7 hours out of it. Which basically lasted me all day with WiFi constantly on and stuff syncing every 30 mins in the background. What helps out alot to save battery life is the fact that HTC included their fast boot tech into the Flyer making it easy to pro long the battery life by turning it off when you dont need it. Both shutdown and start up is approx 3-5 secs so you wont be tapping your fingers waiting for it to boot up.

HTC Sense and General Use

HTC Sense 2.1 for tablets i believe its called is nearly identical to 3.0. Havent played with the Sensation yet. But from reviews the majority of the stuff looks identical. The main changes are that in landscape in HTC Apps they split the screen in half ie. in email you will have it split in half so emails on left and content on the right windows, same follow for most of HTC apps.

Generally the 3.0 seems alot nicer and better than the previous Sense versions. Though im not a big fan of what they did with the notification bar. It just doesnt seem very nice. Just think they could have did a better job at allowing easy access to power menu and recent apps list.




If email, social networks and browsing is important to you i think you will like the integrated apps HTC has included. I never used friends stream before but it seemed to be quite alot nicer on a big screen. Especially for all my news on twitter. If theres a link with a tweet the friends stream app will open the webpage in friendstream so you dont have to be jumping from app to app. Which is handy and saves time.

Internet browsing is extemely fast. Content loads without a problem, flash plays nicely and general scrolling and panning around is very smooth. The downside is that the address bar doesnt go away. Which i think would prove quite useful to make it the same way it is in android when it disappears if you scroll down and only appear in the top or pressing the menu button.



Also the tab switching was quite fustrating. To select tabs you have to press a button which opens up a drawer which shows all the open tabs with the webpage preview inside the tile. When you press on one the drawer just stays there. Making you unnecessarily press it to close it to gain a full page view of the website.

Otherwise to that its a great little browser


The Bad



Apps. If you an app addict. Android tablet isnt for you. Reason why is even the most popular app like facebook dont scale properly. While i didnt encounter any force closes. 3/4 apps i tested didnt scale well and just looked horrible.



Angry Birds managed to work fine and scale fine. But i pressume you can expect incompatibility and horrible pixelation from Indie devs who havent optimized it for tablets.


Conclusion

While the device is still has proven to be useful. I just dont see any value in buying this if your looking to browse the internet, check email and a few other things just wait till the new Galaxy Tab comes. It will retail at 399 and will prove to give alot more bang for you buck. I would expect most owners would lose the pen eventually making the most unique feature of this tablet useless since it wont work that way with any other stylus. The stylus was reported to cost approx 80$.

Though if taking notes down constantly is something that you need for whatever reason this could prove quite useful to you. One thing about a tablet vs paper notes is that there is a higher change you will lose the paper notes than the tablet. And if your on a data plan they will be always sinced with the cloud.

Whats in the Box

Wall Plug Charger (its not MicroUSB, its a 12 pin so your phone charger wont work with it), USB Cable, headphones and a carrying case with a pen holder, documentation.

Price Tag

Im not sure the price of the tablet on its own (ill double check tomorrow)
But you can pick it up in CPW or from Three stores now from 149.90 + Monthly cost of E40 p/m.

With 24 Month Classic Flex Max it will be E149.90
So with 18 Month Classic Flex Max contract it will be E329.90

The plan includes 10GB allowance (the classic "unlimited" plan from Three ) and 350 flexi units. You cant make calls on the tablet. But you can send and recieve texts. So you will be able to use them on texts, internet. Or im sure some one will come along with the dev community and make an app to call people via loudspeaker

The only way i can make sense to make value of this if you use mobile broadband with three or other carrier. To take this out and use this as a main internet browsing device or a wifi modem. 10GB will be plenty for most and can wirelessly tether this via HTC's provided app.


So thats it from me. If you got any questions ill try find it out sometime during the week.

If you want the spec of the Flyer its here

Few more pics in my sky drive folder

thomasj

Excellent review evolutionqy7!

This is one tablet i am considering alongwith the acer a101 (when it comes out)

size does matter and i do consider the option of carrying it around in jeans/trouser pockets a major benefit. I have being doing so with the samsung galaxy tab!

I saw a comment about froyo above and breathed a sigh of relief when you clarified it was gingerbread, i dont ever want to go back to froyo the difference between froyo and gingerbread is huge in terms of responsivness and performance

i have a few questions for you:

- can you use this tablet effectively without the stylus? I wouldnt want to be using it and either way id lose it!

- hows the battery performing? How long are you getting between charges?

- have you been charging via the microusb port? This is one of the reasons id buy it as i carry around the microusb charger for my phone!

Cheers again for the review! By the way are you using the 3g version?

evolutionqy7

thomasj wrote: »

- can you use this tablet effectively without the stylus? I wouldnt want to be using it and either way id lose it!

Yeah theres no problem using it without it. But as mentioned above if you lose it you wont be able to take advantage of marking stuff out quickly or drawing

- hows the battery performing? How long are you getting between charges?

As said it lasted me a whole day. I was quite impressed with the battery life especially since i had WiFi on all the time. 4000mah battery proved to be more than capable of carrying this through out the day. I imagine if your going to be using this with data instead of WiFi battery life would be even better.

- have you been charging via the microusb port? This is one of the reasons id buy it as i carry around the microusb charger for my phone!

Its a different MicroUSB cable. Wont work with phone type MicroUSB

thomasj wrote: »

- Cheers again for the review! By the way are you using the 3g version?

Yeah that was the 3G version But my internet allowance was drained up so didnt really test it on 3G. Via WiFi it proved to have good internet speed.

bd250110

I have to say I don't really understand the 7inch tablet thing. Seems like an odd in-between for me. It's neither fish nor foul really. I know you have said it fit's in your pockets, but I can't see it fitting in my jeans or work trousers, so it would be no advantage for me. While I do like the idea of a stylus fro drawing/annotating, a screen shot would irritate me, I would prefer the option to modify the Doc/PDF, etc. Why the Stylus can't be stored in the tablet itself is beyond me. Another good idea from HTC, fluffed by poor implementation. Yet again, HTC, more style than substance.

MrMan

I'm pondering whether to buy the Flyer but having phoned 3 it appears that it is not available on contract with them.

Does anyone have any info on when and who might make it available on contract?

evolutionqy7

MrMan wrote: »

I'm pondering whether to buy the Flyer but having phoned 3 it appears that it is not available on contract with them.

Does anyone have any info on when and who might make it available on contract?

You can get it with three around 145 on 18 month contract with 10GB data and 300 units. Cpw can do it anyway

MrMan

evolutionqy7 wrote: »

You can get it with three around 145 on 18 month contract with 10GB data and 300 units. Cpw can do it anyway

Is that an in-store deal with 3? When I phoned them they said they don't do the Flyer.

evolutionqy7

Its definetly on sale. It went on sale at the start of this month. Its even in the carphone warehouse monthly magazine beside the galaxy tab.

MrMan

evolutionqy7 wrote: »

Its definetly on sale. It went on sale at the start of this month. Its even in the carphone warehouse monthly magazine beside the galaxy tab.

Thanks for the reply. I was twittering to CPW and they are saying 499 with 25euro/mth contract for 12 mth.

evolutionqy7

MrMan wrote: »

evolutionqy7 wrote: »

Its definetly on sale. It went on sale at the start of this month. Its even in the carphone warehouse monthly magazine beside the galaxy tab.

Thanks for the reply. I was twittering to CPW and they are saying 499 with 25euro/mth contract for 12 mth.

I'll double check tomorrow

MrMan

Thanks a mill !

Bluefoam

HTC are due to launch their 10" honeycomb tablet on 27th

evolutionqy7

MrMan wrote: »

Thanks a mill !

Hey on Classic Flex Max 40E pm

12 month contract - 449E
18 month contract - 329E
24 month contract - 149E

Carphone Warehouse definetly can do it I double checked it today

conor.hogan.2

"Latest Adobe Flash and HTML5 support for fluid video playback"

is this not a stock android feature?

evolutionqy7

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

"Latest Adobe Flash and HTML5 support for fluid video playback"

is this not a stock android feature?

HTC builds it straight into the browser as far as I remember. No need to go to the market. As I said HTC built in alot of features into that tablet that people would use most commonly instead of having to go to the market

conor.hogan.2

Ok, thanks for the clarification.

I was thinking any manufacturer, especially HTC, wouldn't be releasing any extra features.

Tablet looks great, 10 inch on the way though? Also too expensive for what it is imo.

evolutionqy7

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Ok, thanks for the clarification.

I was thinking any manufacturer, especially HTC, wouldn't be releasing any extra features.

Tablet looks great, 10 inch on the way though? Also too expensive for what it is imo.

Yeah well atleast the Flyer doesn't force close half the time as I said if social networking emails and browsing is what your looking for it first perfect with what HTC provided. It also is alot quicker than xoom or transformer, battery life is better as well on the flyer. It was in my case anyway. Flyer lasted me a full day with WiFi and data always on. WiFi only transformer only lasted me half day with WiFi always on.