HTC Flyer Tablet Now Available-We Check One Out In Video

June 29 08:41 2011 by Alexei Rivera Print This Article

The HTC Flyer

So the HTC Flyer hasn’t really been officially announced here in the Philippines, but it’s always been said that the 7” tablet is bound to arrive. Well, in what seems to be HTC Philippines tradition now, the Android 2.3 Gingerbread tablet is available now on a couple of retailers for PHP 30k. We might expect a full launch event later on, but for now we can settle for it being available. And luckily enough, we had one to try at the recent Android Community Meetup – and we took some video of it. Watch it and read up on the specs of this tablet after the jump.

The HTC Flyer is an unusual Android tablet in that it deviates a lot more than what you’d expect from its usual peers, or even tablets in general. Instead of Google’s tablet specific Android build called Honeycomb, the Flyer is using a custom Gingerbread UI that they have retooled with Sense and updated to better fit a tablet sized screen. But it doesn’t end there: HTC has brought back the stylus and added some deeper integration into the Flyer’s OS. The stylus is a new capacitive stylus that should work with the touchscreen. Coupled with the extra layer of Sense’s new tablet OS, now enables you to doodle on a lot of things that you do on the device – allowing you to keep notes and scribble things as you like.

Specswise, the tablet has a 7” 1024×600 pixels LCD display, 1.5Ghz single-core processor, WiFi b/g/n, 5MP Camera that can shoot 720p video, and a 1.3MP front facing camera for video calling. As mentioned before it runs on a custom Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS with Sense and comes onboard with 32GB of memory. You can also expand storage through the micro SD card slot.

The tablet comes in WiFi and 3G form, by which case we asked CMKCellphones and they said that they had the 3G version for sale. Top Electronics also sells it for the same price of PHP 30k as CMKCellphones. While we’re not sure the stylus comes bundled with the package, (WiFi version in the U.S. didn’t come with the stylus in the box) we’re pretty sure the 3G version for most of Asian distribution has the stylus in there. (We’ll try to confirm it as well for everyone’s sake.) At PHP 30k, the Flyer isn’t exactly the cheapest tablet around, but consider that most tablets of this range are only of the WiFi variant, and don’t have any styli involved. (In the U.S., the stylus cost $80, which is kind of crazy.) Either way, you’ll need to weigh the pro’s and con’s with HTC’s tablet to make a decision as it is that much different from the pack. Since we’ve had the opportunity to try one, we’ve recorded a video checking out the interface and it’s web browser. (no stylus though) That, and a closer look video from HTC are below. Enjoy!