Is it easier to have liked and lost, than to haven’t loved whatsoever? This is the question posed by a new tablet pc that takes are designed for one of the deficiencies of the iPad: it’s difficult to write on it with a stylus or pencil.
The HTC Flyer can be a $500 tablet with a 7-inch display. İnstantly, it’s not much different from the other tablets that are scrambling to contend with Apple’s iPad.
The iPad and all its copycats are designed to sense the touch of a hand. The screen layer that performs this looks for large, blunt, electrically conductive objects for example fingers. It doesn’t sense small, sharp ones like pencils.
This is exactly why third-party styluses for the iPad are blunt rubbery sticks. They’re essentially imitation fingers. They are not very good for drawing, but some people find them better than nothing.
The Flyer has got the same finger-sensing screen layer. But it backs this up with another one, which looks for the movement of a specially designed, battery-powered pen.
The pen moves fluidly over the screen, with a relatively sharp (but non-scratchy) point. The pen even senses how hard it’s being pressed on screen. The tablet responds by making the line heavier or thinner.
The pen makes the HTC Flyer tablet an awesome notepad along with a decent sketchpad – at least one that’s much better than the iPad. The Flyer includes a note-taking application that’s compatible with the Evernote online storage service.
You can jot off a note and send it by email. The recipient might find your handwriting in an image attachment. You can also snap a photo with one of the Flyer’s two cameras and color over the picture with the pen. In the e-book reading app, you can scribble notes in the margins and underline with the pen.
Unfortunately, the Flyer lacks the wide range of sketching and doodling apps that exist for the iPad. You cannot dispense with finger-typing on the on-screen keyboard because the tablet doesn’t understand what you’re writing. Simply because no other tablets work with this type of pen, only apps from manufacturer HTC Corp. are compatible.
Another sad thing about the Flyer is that HTC has chosen to treat the pen as an optional accessory. For the $500 you plunk down at Best Buy- the same price as the larger, more capable entry-level iPad – you don’t get the pen. It’s $80 extra. Yet it’s a mystery why anyone would buy a Flyer without it.
Worse, HTC makes zero effort at keeping pen and owner united. There isn’t any slot on the tablet to hold the pen when not in use. There’s no case for that Flyer that will hold the pen. The pen doesn’t even have a little loop that would let you tie it to the tablet or something else that won’t get lost.
In 2 weeks of use, I dropped the pen a dozen times. I’m proud that I managed not to lose it, but I doubt I could go anthat will notother two weeks. I would then have the privilege of buying a replacement for $80, a price for which I could get about 300 Bic pens.
In that context, “never to have loved at all” looks like the cheaper option. Paper pads and ballpoint pens, too.
Sprint Nextel will sell a version of the Flyer it’ll call EVO View 4G, starting June 24. It will have 32 gigabytes of memory, double the storage in Best Buy’s version, and it will get access to Sprint’s data network. In a smart move, Sprint is including the pen, but only “for a limited time.” However, buyers will need to sign up for two years of wireless data service from Sprint, so the final price will be considerably higher.
Another things to consider: The Flyer runs Google’s Android 2.3 software, which in plain English means that it uses the same software as a lot of smartphones, but not other recent iPad rivals. They use a more recent package, “Honeycomb,” that’s designed for tablets. HTC promises to upgrade the Flyer’s software to Honeycomb soon, helping it stay compatible with tablet-specific apps.
In my video-playing test, I got 7.5 hours of play time out of the Flyer, which isn’t excellent for a tablet. The iPad 2 gets ten hours; the Asus Eee Pad Transformer gets nine.
The Transformer is a better example of a tablet that attempts to compete with the iPad by doing something new – in that case, by doubling as a small, elegant laptop thanks to a clever accessory keyboard.
The pen-sensing layer of the HTC Flyer could be a great addition to everything about tablets, but someone really needs to figure out how to make the pen less costly or simpler to keep track of. To end on another corny quote, “If you love something, set it free; if it comes back it’s yours, if it doesn’t, it never was” is not a phrase to live by with regards to $80 pens
