HTC’s 7-inch tablet, the Flyer, has gone up for pre-order at UK retailer Carphone Warehouse (along with their Best Buy Mobile arm). Currently only available off-contract, the HTC Flyer is being offered for £599.99 with no data plan, SIM-lock or agreement; that means buyers will be able to slot in a SIM of their own and not lock themselves into a two-year data plan if they don’t want to.
Specs are just as we’ve seen before, so a 1024 x 600 capacitive touchscreen that works with both finger input and the HTC Scribe active digital stylus, a 5-megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing webcam. The stylus can be used to annotate webpages and create handwritten notes, which can then be sync’d to Evernote.
£599.99 isn’t cheap, but we’d expect to see subsidized deals when the Flyer gets broader availability. We’re still excited about the pen possibilities, though others have expressed concerns that the slate is over-priced considering the rest of the tablet market today. Are you tempted?
Update: Carphone Warehouse tells us that, despite the listing saying the Flyer is currently in-stock, the tablet won’t ship until May 2011.
Are HTC nuts or what!?? £600 for a tiny tablet that runs phone software instead of tablet software and comes with a clunky stylus!
Who is seriously going to buy one of these when an iPad 2 costs just £400? That’s £200 less for currently the best selling tablet in the world, which has 65000 apps, iTunes and iBooks!!
It’s ridiculous HTC! Even if you only want an Android tablet, there is the Samsung 10.1, Motorola Xoom, ASAUS Transformer, Toshiba and LG to choose from. Each of these are real tablets running real tablet OS’ and are far, far better devices than the Flyer
Wow!! That’s GREAT. They will sell a million of these in a week.
I am particularly impressed how much information HTC can squeeze into the screen, which according to the advertisement from Carphone Warehouse, is 1.7″. (grin)
Seriously, though.I am impressed with the features of this tablet. I couldn’t care less whether it runs Honeycomb, Icecream or Lollypop. It’s the functionality of the apps that counts, not the beauty of the O/S. HTC Sense is an excellent shell which I very much like on my mobile phone. If it’s anything like that I expect to have lots of benefits from the HTC Flyer (which I am almost 100% sure to buy!).