The Flyer is HTC's first Android-powered tablet device. Entering a market already populated by the iPad, iPad 2, BlackBerry PlayBook and the Motorola Xoom among other also rans at a time when that market still isn't convinced (or sufficiently educated) as to the need for such devices...how does it stack up?

Features

• Fly through the web wherever you go

  Conveniently compact and light for travel, yet amazingly powerful, the HTC Flyer tablet with a 7" display and a superfast 1.5 GHz processor is perfect for web browsing at home, in the car or on a business trip. To make it even better, it features Adobe Flash support, multi-window browsing with pinch to zoom, and a clever quick look-up that lets you tap into Wikipedia, Youtube and other web resources.

• 3D fun at every turn

  No more hunting around for stuff, anything you want will come to you on a cool 3D carousel. Photos, entertainment, weather, calendar, mail, friends smoothly roll around at your fingertips, front and centre, while giving you a sneak peak of what's to come.

• Be in two places at once

  Whether you're stuck in traffic, working late, or halfway around the world, you can make live video calls to those closest to you on your HTC Flyer straight from your contact list. So you can say it in person as if you're face to face, no matter if they're on their PC at home, on their office computer or on the other side of the world using their HTC Flyer.

• A pen that's quite magic

  

  HTC Flyer's magic pen transforms anything. It can draw, paint, write, and even retouch pictures. It can be a highlighter for the reader (and by the way all your highlights will be collated when you're done). The HTC Flyer can link audio to the notes you take for work, and it can add voiceover to a storybook you're drawing up at home. Work or play, it's magic for the whole family.

• A games room wherever you go

  The HTC Flyer has pushed the frontiers of hardcore play with the integration of the OnLive gaming service. So as of today, you can forget about having to invest in gaming consoles. All you need is the OnLive game controller and you can instantly play the best games in the world anywhere you have a fast Internet connection.

• Hollywood on-demand

  With HTC Watch, HTC Flyer transforms into a portable cinema featuring a wide selection of the latest Hollywood blockbusters for on-demand viewing. And with an expansive 7" screen and superb SRS virtual surround sound, you can immerse yourself in the cinematic experience whether it's on a short break or a long drive.

• Amplify your audio experience

  It's not just the visuals that are impressive. HTC Flyer comes with dual speakers for a much richer listening and entertainment experience. Enjoy high fidelity sound with SRS WOW HD™ virtual surround sound.

  

• Zoodles of fun with Kid Mode

  Transform your HTC Flyer into a fun, safe and secure playground for your kids. Kid Mode opens up a world of brainy games, story books – that let you tell a bedtime story even when you're not there and art mode that incorporates the magic pen and lets their artistic side run wild.

• A library in your pocket

  There's no need to carry epic novels around with you anymore with a built-in library of classics at your fingertips. Flick through titles, and even highlight and explore a word or phrase through Wikipedia, Google, YouTube or the dictionary. Go ahead, kids and you can now download your favourite books straight to your HTC Flyer and take them anywhere.

• Capture life in HD

  Have you ever had a camera with a 7-inch viewfinder? It's an eye opening experience! Take great shots with the 5MP camera and capture life in HD with the 720p HD camcorder.

• More fun with photos

  Take family photos to another level with our new Snapbooth. You can change lenses or add effects to make moments more memorable. And when you're done taking the photo - use the pen to re-touch it, name it or turn your picture into a birthday card.

• Stay on top of your schedule

  View all of your calendar appointments on the big 7" screen. Every appointment, birthday, event and holiday gets plenty of space, so you'll never have to squint. It will even sync up with your email account, so everything that happens on your computer, happens on your HTC Flyer.

• One access point for all your mail

  If you've got a work email account and a private one, your HTC Flyer helps you by merging them all together into one inbox so you're always organised. They're colour coded, so you know what's what, and you can sort them by importance, groups or content. Super organised, just like you.

• All the details, all at your fingertips

  Life gets busy, so your HTC Flyer also becomes your personal organiser – always ready to jot anything down at a moment's notice. Use Evernote to keep notes, add pictures, take a voice recording, whatever you need to help keep on schedule. Evernote syncs up instantly to a secure online server, so you can access your notes either from your HTC Flyer, your phone or your home or work computer.

• Office on the go

  The HTC Flyer is small enough to take anywhere and powerful enough to get the job done. View and edit Office documents wherever you find yourself. And if the need for a hard copy arises - send it via Wi-Fi to a nearby printer.

The official product page is available here - http://www.htc.com/uk/product/flyer/overview.html

Specifications

• Size - 195.4mm (7.7in) x 122mm (4.8in) x 13.2mm (0.52in)
• Weight - 420 grams (14.82 ounces) with battery
• Display - 7 inch touch-sensitive screen with 1024 x 600 resolution
• CPU Speed - 1.5 GHz
• Platform - Android 2.3.3 with HTC Sense 2.1 for Tablet
• Memory
  • Internal Storage - 32GB
  • RAM - 1GB
    
    The actual available internal phone storage may differ depending on the software configuration of your phone
  • Expansion Slot - microSD memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)
• Camera
  • 5 megapixel colour camera with auto focus
  • 1.3 megapixel front camera
• Sensors
  • Ambient light sensor
  • G-Sensor
  • Digital Compass
• Connectors
  • 3.5mm stereo audio jack
  • Standard micro-USB (12-pin micro-USB 2.0)
• Multimedia
  • Audio supported formats
    Playback: AAC, AMR, OGG, M4A, MID, MP3, WAV, WMA (Windows Media Audio 9)
    Recording: AMR, AAC
  • Video supported formats
    Playback: 3GP, 3G2, MP4, WMV (Windows Media Video 9), AVI (MP4, ASP and MP3), XVID (MP4, ASP and MP3)
    Recording: 3GP
• Network
  • HSPA / WCDMA: Europe/Asia - 900/AWS/2100 MHz
  • Quad-band GSM / GPRS / EDGE: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
• Internet - WiFi: IEEE 802.11 b/g/n
• Bluetooth - Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP for wireless stereo headsets
• GPS - Internal GPS antenna

Promotional Video

Home Screen

The 7-fold Android home screen is now familiar to most, the Flyer adds a new twist to this interface by introducing a carousel effect so that should you be on the left-most screen there is no need to scroll back to the right again to return to centre - all screens are available in a circular arrangement, with a preview of the next screen displayed at the edge of the current view.
The same widgets you have come to expect from HTC Sense's skin are available, as well as some new ones:

People - access to your contacts list

Google Reader - RSS and ATOM news feeds

HTC Reader - access your eBooks directly from your homescreen

Email

Friend Stream - access your Facebook and Twitter updates

As we've come to expect from the Android platform widgets can be added, removed and rearranged to best suit your requirements, be they application shortcuts, hardware controls or links to web pages as well as a wide range of additional widgets available from the Android Market. With Android 3.1 possibly available as an update to the Flyer in the future, these widgets will be resizeable in the future to free up or occupy as much screen real estate as suits your needs.

Applications

Running Android 2.3.3, the Flyer packs all the features you have come to expect from Google's mobile operating system, and supports the latest versions all of the groovy apps available in the Android Market (Google Goggles, Google Docs, Google Translate, Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Places, Google Latitude, etc) that make Android the truly versatile platform it is.

The application list is as follows:

• Amazon MP3
• Calculator
• Calendar
• Camcorder
• Camera
• Car Panel
• Clock
• Connected Media
• Dock Mode
• Downloads
• Facebook
• FriendStream
• Gallery
• GMail
• Google Search
• HTC Hub
• HTC Likes
• Internet
• Kid Mode
• Latitude
• Learn More
• Locations
• Mail
• Maps
• Market
• Messages
• Music
• Navigation
• News
• News & Weather
• Notes
• PDF Viewer
• People
• Places
• Polaris Office
• Press Reader
• Quick Lookup
• Reader
• Settings
• Setup
• Snapbooth
• Soundhorn
• Stocks
• Talk
• Task Manager
• Teeter
• Transfer
• Twitter
• Voice Recorder
• Voice Search
• Watch
• Weather
• WiFi Hotspot
• YouTube

The Flyer Pen

By definition the Flyer, and any tablet, will be compared at some point to the iPad, and arguably rightly so as, love it or hate it, Apple did do it first and have pretty much defined a whole market.
HTC's first foray into this arena with the Flyer is a respectfully powered Android 2.3.3 device bundled with a number of apps we have seen above and which I'll go into further detail about later, but it really is the pen that makes this device so much greater than the sum of its parts. This is not just a capacitive stylus, do not be fooled. This simple AAA battery-powered stick, which fits conveniently in the supplied carry pouch as part of the sales package, adds a wealth of functionality that makes the Flyer a truly impressive portable business and entertainment device: imagine being able to annotate an electronically received fax or PDF document and send your comments back to the office or original sender, no matter where you are, on a device that is always and instantly-on; to create handwritten, typed or dictated notes with attached documents, images, calendar events, sound recordings and more to create a truly interactive personal journal all of which can be synced online and accessed from a wide variety of devices (see the Notes section below). The future is now, and it's "flying"! (Excuse the pun, seemed like a good idea at the time).

At a simple level, the pen can be used to draw on the screen no matter what application you are currently viewing.

Alongside the usual Android hardware buttons (home, menu, back, search) is a new button for the pen. Tapping on this button will bring up an additional menu:

allowing you to select from a number of different pen "styles" (pen, highlighter, brush, etc)

not to mention a range of colours. Two hardware buttons on the pen turn it from an adding to deleting mode, so you can add notes and then remove them, or draw on screen and touch up your artistic creation:

The pen can also be used to select text or areas of the screen:

an image of the screen can be saved at any point by simply tapping the pen on the screen

Email

The Flyer boasts the same email client as used on HTC's other Android 2.3.3 devices including the Desire S and the Wildfire S and at the time of writing soon the Desire HD and the Incredible S, providing support for the ubiquitous POP and IMAP protocols as well as multiple Exchange ActiveSync accounts. For corporate users the Exchange ActiveSync client provides arguably the best and most feature-rich experience of all currently available platforms (with the possible exception of Windows Mobile [not Windows Phone]) including such niceties as the ability to define peak and off-peak synchronisation schedules, out of office and conversation view

The procedure to set up an Exchange email account is the same as on those other devices listed above and is available here. Once synchronised, email accounts can be managed with a nice preview pane as with Outlook on the desktop:

or in full-screen mode

Messages can be arranged in a number of views, including by conversation, by attachment size, by sender and more.

With the addition of the included Polaris Office application, Microsoft Office attachments can be viewed at the tap of a button:

and more importantly EDITED:

Connectivity

Thanks to its wealth of connectivity options, the Flyer can become your portable wireless hotspot providing Internet access to any other WiFi-capable device via its high-speed 3G cellular interface, can share this same Internet link via USB on both Windows and Mac, or can similarly share your PC's connection to the Internet via USB on Windows.

Reader

Besides all of this functionality, your Flyer also becomes an ebook reader thanks to HTC's Reader application:

which naturally can be used to annotate and highlight using the magic pen!

Notes

The Notes application, when combined with the magic pen, is another killer feature compatible with the popular Evernote cloud-based note-taking, saving and sharing platform. With this app you can create simple notes, journal or storyboard records, either typed or handwritten, with optional attached voice recordings, images and documents and calendar entries. A feature called Timemark enables you to capture the audio of a meeting in line with your written notes, so tapping on a word in your notes instantly takes you to that 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 you 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.

Mobile Cloud Gaming with OnLive

HTC takes mobile gaming to an entirely new level by being the first mobile device in the world to integrate OnLive Inc.’s revolutionary cloud-based gaming service. OnLive is leading in the home gaming market by letting people play top video games on their televisions and computers without the need to buy expensive gaming hardware or software. When integrated fully, the OnLive service will enable customers to pipe the OnLive service through the HTC Flyer tablet’s broadband wireless to their television sets, or let them play directly on the tablet. When integrated on the HTC Flyer tablet, people can play a variety of games, including hits like Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood™, NBA 2K11 and Lego Harry Potter™.

HTC Watch

The HTC Watch service enables low-cost on-demand progressive downloading of hundreds of High-Definition movies from major studios. The intuitive, natural design of the HTC Watch service makes it easy to find the latest movie and video content, while advanced technology on the back-end enables instant playback over the HTC Flyer tablet’s high-speed wireless connection.

Miscellaneous

The Flyer features the same HTC Quick Lookup utility as included on their other devices enabling you to quickly enter the same search phrase into a number of online resources including Wikipedia, YouTube, Google, Dictionary and Thesaurus:

The Task Manager application allows you to quickly and easily manage your running applications to ensure your device is always running at peak efficiency:

The Power Saver feature allows you to set usage schedules so that the device automatically powers off non-essential components at night to preserver battery life and data usage:

Contact Brightpoint GB today on +44 (0)870 849 0225 to check availability.

You can download the User Guide for the Flyer here