14 DAY TRIAL // The highly anticipated HTC Flyer tablet has just been spotted and is available for pre-orders from German online retailer Cyberport for €499 (about $685).
The Taiwanese handset manufacturer has recently refreshed its Android smartphone lineup with five new devices, which were introduced at the 2011 Mobile World Congress last week.
HTC Incredible S, Desire S, Wildfire S, Salsa and ChaCha target different market segments. The company's first Android tablet, the Flyer, has to gain market share from Apple's iPad and Samsung's Galaxy Tab tablets.
The Flyer runs Android 2.4 Gingerbread and seems to be underpowered when compared with Motorola's XOOM and Blackberry's PlayBook which embed dual-core processors.
HTC's tablet had the chance to win some popularity by being retailed for a lower price. Unfortunately, the 3G-enabled version of the device was spotted a few days ago at Amazon Germany for €669, which makes it pretty expensive.
HTC's CEO Peter Chou made a funny assertion during the official presentation of the tablet at the Mobile World Congress, by comparing the weight of the device with that of an average book.
Even though the tablet weighs only 415g (battery included), Mr. Chou forgot to mention that an “average” book is also average when it comes to size.
The HTC Flyer features a 7-inch touchscreen display that boasts a 1024 x 600 pixel resolution, which makes it one of the smallest compared with its main competitors.
Furthermore, the Flyer features a 1.5GHz application processor, which is the most powerful single core CPU included in a mobile device, but cannot be compared with a dual-core processor.
It also packs 32GB of internal memory, 1GB of RAM and microSD memory card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB).
HTC stated that the tablet's operating system will be upgraded to Android 3.0 Honeycomb soon after the device becomes available on the market.