HTC Flyer Review
HTC Flyer (32GB)
In the past years, HTC has rapidly built up an enviable reputation (and bank balance) in the smartphone space with a succession of feature-rich, smartly designed, and innovative handsets. The HD2 introduced us to the 4.3-inch form factor, the EVO 4G ushered in the era of 720p video recording, and the Legend wrapped itself inside a never-before-seen aluminum unibody enclosure.
Today, the company’s Android assembly line is turning out yet another groundbreaking device, though this one’s closer in size to the Athena than the Aria. We’re talking about the 7-inch Flyer, the most unique of this year’s Android tablet offerings, opting for a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, a sturdy aluminum construction that doesn’t even try to compete in the race for extreme thinness, and a Magic Pen to make you forget it’s running Gingerbread and not Honeycomb.
Set for release under the EVO View 4G moniker on Sprint in the US, this tablet is the sum of a set of bold choices on the part of HTC. To see how well those decisions have come off.
Hardware
Thinking back to the first time we saw the HTC Flyer in person – at a pre-MWC briefing back in February – we have to say this tablet didn’t make the happiest of first impressions. It’s a weighty old thing (420 grams / 14.8 ounces) that looked thick even before we laid eyes on the subsequent iPad 2 and Samsung Galaxy Tab super-slimsters.
We had a 7-inch Galaxy Tab on hand and the Flyer was instantly humbled by the slicker, lighter, and far more refined slate from Samsung. HTC’s choice of a tri-color palette also dashes any chances of the Flyer appearing sophisticated.
The white plastic elements at the top and bottom don’t really blend in well with either the grey aluminum shell or the black bezel around the screen. Adding insult to injury, the lower one of those plastic inserts actually protrudes from the body, giving an already chunky tablet some extra junk in the trunk.
Camera
The trend of us finding unsatisfying cameras on tablets continues. The Flyer’s 5 megapixel rear imager struggled mightily during our testing in spite of being provided with nearly perfect lighting to do its work in. Blotchy, blurry, and simply bad, its output was consistently below what we might hope to see produced by a modern mobile device. 5 megapixels are clearly far too many for this sensor to fill and the only time we can condone taking pictures with the Flyer is when you know you won’t be showing them in a resolution greater than, say, half a megapixel
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. In terms of software, you’re looking at HTC’s typical customized interface, which could do with a few more adjustment options, but then if the picture-capturing hardware isn’t up to much, what does the software really matter? A saving grace, perhaps, is HTC’s inclusion of a number of filters and effects that might let you use the Flyer’s camera to create funkier.
Software
Setting aside the improvements just introduced by Google in Android 3.1, we’ve been of the view that Honeycomb remains unpolished and in need of extra work to optimize responsiveness and better exploit the added real estate afforded by tablets relative to smartphones. Those are things that will surely come over time, but until they do, Android slate buyers are left to answer the question of what they should do in the interim.
Motorola will tell you to run the standard Honeycomb and like it, Samsung will tell you that TouchWiz 4.0 will make everything better, and HTC will urge you to use Gingerbread until it can cook up the right Honeycomb recipe. We can’t yet speak authoritatively on how Samsung’s skinned Honeycomb tastes, but from our experience with the Flyer, we’d argue HTC’s implementation is preferable to stock Android 3.0 installations.
It’s faster to respond, feels more refined, and though it has significant weaknesses of its own, the unfortunately immature Honeycomb doesn’t offer a stark enough contrast to highlight them as it should. Lest you find all this poor consolation for HTC failing to ship the Flyer with the latest firmware on board, an update to Android 3.x has been promised for this summer.
Battery life
Verry impressive. We unplugged the Flyer at 8AM one morning, spent the full day throwing everything we could think of at it – push updates from Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, news feed of Tabletolic and BBC updates, plus extensive camera testing, web browsing, music playback, and a solid hour of I gameplay – and by 8PM in the evening we still had over 25 percent of juice left.
For a 3G device whose cellular connection was regularly put to use, that was a spectacular performance.
Looking at Android’s battery-tracking graph, the camera was the main culprit for eating into the Flyer’s energy reserves. It looks to be one of the few tasks that require the tablet to run at full throttle, and the briskness with which it depleted the battery illustrates how taxing that 1.4GHz speed is.
We managed to get 12 action-packed hours out of the Flyer’s cell and have no doubt it’ll last for two days’ worth of regular use. HTC also throws in an optional sleep mode, which shuts down wireless radios when the tablet’s locked. You can set specific time periods for when this is on (e.g. 11PM to 6AM) and the tradeoff for extended battery life is obviously that you won’t receive any push alerts without turning the tablet on.
Of course, if you’re actually sleeping during that period, that’s no downer at all. Naturally, this is in addition to the company’s familiar power saver feature that tweaks screen brightness and other settings when a given threshold of battery reserves is passed…