The Flyer tablet offers a 7-inch touch-screen display and features Scribe technology for note taking.
BARCELONA--The tablet market became ever more crowded with HTC's
release of the Flyer tablet, which debuted this week at Mobile World
Congress. The device combines natural touch and pen
interaction and features the company's Sense user interface. It runs a
hybrid version of Gingerbread (Android 2.4). Many of its
competitors use the latest version of Android, called "Honeycomb,"
which was specifically designed for tablet devices.
Encased in an aluminum unibody, the tablet boasts a 7-inch touch-screen
display, 1.5Ghz processor and high-speed HSPA+ wireless capabilities.
The Flyer's tablet-focused Sense platform features a 3D home screen
with a carousel of widgets. The tablet also offers enhanced Web
browsing with Flash 10 and HTML 5. The company said the Flyer would be
available to customers globally during the second quarter of the year.
Scribe technology introduces integrated digital ink innovations the
company said makes it easier and more natural to take notes, sign
contracts, draw pictures or write on a Web page or photo. A feature
called Timemark enables users to capture the audio of an event in line
with written notes, so tapping on a word in the notes instantly takes
users to the exact place in time in the audio recording of the meeting.
Notes are also integrated with the calendar so when there is an
appointment reminder, users are automatically prompted with an
opportunity to begin a new note or in the case of recurring meetings,
to continue where the last meeting left off. The Flyer tablet also
features built-in synchronization with Evernote, a notes application
and service.
Other features include 32GB of internal storage, 1GB of RAM, a microSD
memory card expansion slot, micro-USB port, 5-megapixel color camera
with auto focus and a 1.3-megapixel front camera. The Flyer also comes
with an ambient light sensor and digital compass, an internal GPS
antenna and Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP for wireless stereo headsets.
"Clearly, smartphones have transformed our lives but as we observed how
people use smartphones, computers and other technologies, we saw an
opportunity to create a tablet experience that is different, more
personal and productive," said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC. "We are
progressing down a path as an industry when people will no longer be in
a single device paradigm, but have multiple wireless devices for
different needs; this is the direction we are moving."
The company also announced HTC Watch, a connected video service
that will debut on the Flyer tablet, and will collaborate with OnLive
to launch a cloud-based mobile gaming service for the tablet. The Watch
video download service enables on-demand progressive downloading of
hundreds of High-Definition movies and instant playback over the
tablet's high-speed wireless connection.
The tablet will also integrate OnLive's cloud-based gaming
service, which lets users play video games on their televisions and
computers without the need to buy gaming hardware or software. When
integrated fully, the OnLive service will enable customers to pipe the
OnLive service through the Flyer's broadband wireless to their
television sets, or let them play directly on the tablet.
Nathan Eddy is Associate Editor, Midmarket, at eWEEK.com. Before joining eWEEK.com, Nate was a writer with ChannelWeb and he served as an editor at FierceMarkets. He is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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