HTC’s anticipated new tablet was made official at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Spain, but it has a whole lot of competition in the emerging market where innovation is everything.
The tablet market may just be the most competitive one in the entire electronics industry right now. This week alone, there are all sorts of “firsts” being shown off. One is the first to run Android 3.0, one is the first to have a glasses-free 3D display, and one is the first with 4G connectivity.
So, when a company wants to bring something new into this arena it needs to bring something big. The HTC Flyer falls short of anything headline-worthy, but it has a lot of neat features nonetheless.
For example, its 1.45 GHz processor is about the most powerful we’ve seen yet, and it also has connectivity with HSPA+, which is the 4G standard that T-Mobile uses.
It can run apps in a split-screen mode, which is definitely cool — have your browser on one half of the screen to look up where the best-reviewed restaurant is, and then use the other half to look it up on Google Maps.
The Flyer will be powered by Android 2.4, which is the latest version of the software for most devices, but it falls short of 3.0, the version optimized for tablets.
It also comes with a stylus and will emphasize its note-taking abilities, something we haven’t seen with previous tablets.
HTC’s Flyer will be available in the second quarter of 2011.
