HTC Flyer preview: Hardware specifications and thoughts

News · 16 Feb 2011 · MTW Editorial Team

First off, big thumbs down to HTC who only allowed those, who were able to go to the press event, to get a closer look at the HTC Flyer yesterday and even those present at the event weren’t allowed to touch it… (I had a meeting with MS at the same time so I couldn’t be present at HTC’s announcement). So everybody else was left with 3 devices running a promo video behind a glass (see video after the break). Anyway, so what is the Flyer all about? Well, I’m still trying to figure out what went through HTC’s mind here and why they decided to make this weird Android 2.4 tablet instead of going for a Tegra 2 powered Android 3.0 Honeycomb product like every other major OEM. The company definitely seems to be in so kind of identity crisis and thinks that it’s more important for them to push out their brand name with recycled hardware (HD2-HD7, Desire HD -> Incredible S, Desire S etc..) instead of pushing the hardware forward or even updating the current device with their latest software version so that we won’t have to buy exactly the same hardware (re-branded and renamed) just to have the latest version of Android and Sense. But I then remembered something: HTC has always done this back in the Windows Mobile days. Every single WinMo phone that came out after the original HTC Touch was the same frigging hardware internally and all that changed was the TouchFlo version (their last innovative product was the HTC HD2). The same is happening now with their Android devices and this is seriously starting to piss off some people. Now when you think about it, the MSM8255 that was first introduced in the Desire HD is still one of the best SoC out there so there was no real reason to change it and personally think that what Samsung and LG are doing is just overkill given that Android doesn’t seem to take any real advantage out of the crazy processing power found in their newly announced handsets.. The main problem here is that HTC is going to market those new devices as something brand new super phones when they are in fact just recycled Desire HD’ with smaller screens.

Back to the HTC Flyer. Lest start with the hardware specifications:

Weight

* 420 grams (14.82 ounces) with battery

Display

* 7 inch touch-sensitive screen with 1024 X 600 resolution

Pressure Sensitive Stylus:

N-Trig G 3.5 chipset. 99 levels of pressure detected

CPU speed

MSM8255 1.5 GHz

Memory

Internal storage: 32 GB
RAM: 1 GB

(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)

Connectors

* 3.5 mm stereo audio jack
* Standard micro-USB (12-pin micro-USB 2.0)

HSPA/WCDMA:

* Europe/Asia: 900/AWS/2100 MHz

Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE:

* 850/900/1800/1900 MHz

Android™ 2.4 with HTC Sense™

Camera

* 5 megapixel color camera with auto focus
* 1.3 megapixel front camera

Sensors

* Ambient light sensor
* G-Sensor
* Digital compass

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

Wi-Fi®:

* IEEE 802.11 b/g/n

Bluetooth®

* Bluetooth® 3.0 with A2DP for wireless stereo headsets

GPS

* Internal GPS antenna

Battery:

*4000Mha battery

Looks nifty right? Well it’s a far cry from the LG Optimus Pad and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. The only real differentiator is the pressure sensitive stylus that is used through the HTC Scribe software that the company has implemented in its newest version of Sense. HTC Scribe allows the users to quickly pen down notes, share snippets of info (via mail,facebook etc) but I really can’t talk much about it now given that I have yet to handle it myself. HTC has also added a new HTC Watch Video/Movie streaming service and OnLive gaming capabilities.