Apple's iPad 3 Coming in Two Models in 2012: Rumor

eWeek leaked that Apple's next iPad will arrive in two models (which would be quite a change for apple) and the iPad 2 will be repositioned to battle against the fast selling Amazon's Kindle Fire according to a DigiTimes report. Apple will unveil two iPad models at a conference in January, according to Taiwanese publication.

Meanwhile, according to the report, the new iPads will feature higher-resolution screens and “dual-LED light bars” to “strengthen the brightness of the panels.” (quotes from DigiTimes)

Earlier in December, DigiTimes quoted still other unnamed sources in the supply chain as claiming the first next-generation iPads would arrive within three or four months....... Certainly if Apple follows the same release schedual of the previous two iPad versions, the next will make its debut early in 2012, but however the wild, unfounded, far-fetched rumors that usually accompany each new iPad on its way to close unveiling and release, it just pays of to take many of the reports with a miniature grain of salt.

Apple concludes 2011 with a untouched share of the tablet market. However, the competition is unlikely to be diminiuative in 2012. Microsoft and its manufacturing partners are prepping a series of tablets running the upcoming Windows 8, which will make a hard play for PC power users and businesses. In addition, competitors like Samsung are still grasping the edge tablet fight. Whatever Apple decides to release next year, it will continue to face a crowded marketplace, which I'm sure it will do! 

Read more »

Microsoft lines up Tablet series for 2012

We are comming up to the year 2012 and new news is that Microsoft is preparing a new generation of Windows Tablet  for 2012 running Windows 8, will be another competitor to the booming tablet market,  Bring on 2012!


  

Read more »

Hasbro sues Asus over Transformer Prime 'copy'???

Toy maker Hasbro is suing computer manufacturer Asus for daring - allegedly - to name an Android tablet after one of its biggest money spinners.
Yes, Hasbro owns the Transformers line, and is annoyed not only that Asus has released the Eee Pad Transformer but also added the word 'Prime' to the end of the product's moniker.
Optimus Prime, as any ten-year-old or Michael Bay will tell you, is the leader of the goodie Transformers, known for their multi-pivot limbs and cunning disguises.

Hasbro's legal assault team attempts to impede Asus tablets' entry into Blighty

Said the plastic figure giant: "The specific actions we are taking today against Asus underscores yet again Hasbro’s willingness to pursue companies who misappropriate our intellectual property for their own financial gain."
We'd argue the company doesn't have a (retractable) leg to stand on.
Lots of companies share names, but provided they operate in very different markets, that is considered reasonable and not an invasion of either's territory.
Then there's the fact that while Transformers are robots that ingeniously 'transform' from humanoid figures into a vehicles, the Transformer Prime is a two-part unit that intentionally comes apart.

Robot in disguise?

The only Transformers that ever came apart are those yanked to bits by irate youngsters unable to get them to transform correctly.
Transformers are brightly coloured. Transformer Primes comes in dull, gun-metal grey and a bronzy colour Asus calls 'champaign'.
Presumably, with a five-core Nvidia Tegra 3 chip on board, the Prime will fizz when in arrives early next year.
If it does, of course - Hasbro lawyers will undoubtedly seek to block its entry into the US and possibly elsewhere too. Which all seems a bit petty and trivial to me..........

-reghardware

Read more »

Sony Tablet S Review

Sony has an enviable record of producing top-quality, high-end laptops, but its attempts to jump on the budget portable bandwagon have so far met with mixed success. It ignored netbooks until it was too late, and even tried to reinvent the genre with the ill-fated, pocket-sized P Series.

Its belated entry into the tablet race, the Tablet S, is a much more mainstream affair. Pricing is on a par with the iPad 2 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1: the 16GB Wi-Fi version costs £399, and the 32GB is £480, while the 16GB 3G model costs £500. It has a dual-core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU and 1GB of RAM running Android Honeycomb 3.2.

Sony being Sony, though, things aren’t left at that. In fact, in a market where it’s becoming increasingly tough to stand out, the Tablet S is something of a guiding light. It boasts a unique wedge-shaped profile, which has a number of advantages. When you pop it down on a desk, it sets the screen at a slight angle so you don’t have to hunch over to see the screen and type. The thick edge gives you a good chunk to grip onto, and most of the weight is at that edge, making it much more balanced to hold in one hand than its rivals. The 586g weight, smaller 9.4in screen and grippy, textured rear panel also help.

Other practical additions include a micro USB socket that can be used not only as a means of transferring files from PC/laptop to tablet, but also as a USB host, allowing you to connect extra storage, a keyboard, mouse or game controller via a converter cable (not included). There’s also a full-sized SD card slot, so supplementing the 16GB or 32GB of storage is simple. The one major omission is an HDMI output.

The best part is that although the textured plastics don’t feel as expensive as those in the Galaxy Tab 10.1, the Tablet S looks every bit the premium device. Its thin edge tapers down to 9.8mm, the sides are shaped so the tablet looks like a folded-over sheaf of paper, and the gloss black contrasts satisfyingly with matte silver plastic. It’s a very handsome piece of kit.

Sony’s other main innovation focuses on home entertainment, with the Tablet S featuring an infrared emitter, allowing it to be used as a universal remote control. As you’d expect, setting up new devices is straightforward: select the manufacturer from a list, then the product type, and cycle through the options provided until you hit upon something that works.

In a few minutes, we had a Samsung TV and Windows Media Center PC up and running, then took it to another house and set up a Sky HD box and Panasonic Viera TV. We struggled when it came to more esoteric AV components: stereo amplifiers are limited to seven manufacturers, and we couldn’t find ours on the list; and there was no sign of the Virgin Media TiVo DVR.

But the good news is the tablet can also “learn” commands, so if you can’t find your device in the tablet’s very long list, you’ll be able to program it in. And once set up, it all works beautifully.

There’s no point in innovating if you don’t do the basics right, and we’re happy to report that Sony has got it spot on. The 1,280 x 800 resolution display is top class, boasting superb brightness and contrast. We measured the former at 379cd/m² and the latter at 733:1 – on a level with the iPad 2. Suffice it to say, movies and pictures look outstanding, and good viewing angles mean it’s just at home acting as a shared photo album as a personal movie and music player.

Menu scrolling and the like feel immediate and smooth, as do web page panning, zooming and scrolling actions. And when pushed through our set of benchmarks, the Sony produced the sorts of figures we’ve come to expect from a top tablet: the BBC desktop homepage loaded in four seconds, the SunSpider JavaScript test finished in 2,191ms, and it scored 1,805 points in the Android Quadrant benchmark. Battery life is acceptable: it played our low-resolution video continuously for 8hrs 41mins before running out of juice.

The camera is excellent: not up to the standards of the best smartphones, but strides ahead of the tablet competition, with good contrast and decent autofocus and a lot less of the hideous, smeary over-compression that afflicts so many of its competitors. It’s a shame there’s no flash to help out in low light, though.

Software

As is increasingly the case with Honeycomb tablets, Sony has tweaked the interface in various ways and thrown in a bundle of extra software. On the desktop, Sony adds four small (rather ugly) shortcut icons at the top of the Honeycomb desktop next to the Google Search and Voice Search options, for the browser, the remote app, the social networking app and email.

In the top-right corner of the Android desktop is a shortcut to another frivolous extra – the Favourites screen, which groups recent apps and activities together in a sort of 3D video wall. Sony has also replaced the standard Honeycomb icons for many of the core Google apps with its own. Quite why, we couldn’t say.

Fortunately, the changes aren’t all bad. We like the revamped app drawer, which sees a change of colour scheme (from black to white) and scrolling orientation (it’s now vertical rather than horizontal), plus the addition of various viewing and organisational tools. Apps can be sorted alphabetically, or by “Newest first”. Custom dividers can be used to split apps into groups, and shortcuts rearranged with a quick drag of the finger. And the screen can be viewed in two-column or grid layout.

PlayStation certification means the Tablet S will be able to play old-school PS One games, with two titles included as tasters: the venerable Crash Bandicoot and Pinball Heroes. Yet the PlayStation Store app needed to purchase further games wasn’t up and running when we wrote this review. Sony says it will release this sometime in October.

Sony includes its own music and video apps, both of which come in addition to the existing standard Honeycomb offerings. The principal appeal of these – aside from a rather attractive cover art “coffee table”-style view, which allows you to rummage through albums as if they were strewn on a flat surface in front of you – is the ability to “throw” music and video from the tablet to a suitable DLNA-compatible device. It’s a great idea, but not one that currently works very well. It recognised Windows Media Player on our network, but refused to play any file we attempted to send across.

There are also improved camera apps, Sony’s own ebook reader software, a social networking app that aggregates Twitter and Facebook feeds, a DLNA client for streaming music and video across the network to the tablet, plus links to the company’s Music and Video Unlimited services (although again, the service wasn’t yet up and running when we tried to test it).

Verdict

There’s a lot packed in, and despite some ragged edges the software line-up certainly adds plenty of value. And that’s the picture we take away from Sony’s Tablet S as a whole. It may be unusual, but it isn’t quirky for the sake of it. The design works very well, the universal remote control facility is a stroke of genius and it’s backed up by solid performance in all the key areas: the camera is good, the screen is excellent, the battery life fine, and performance well up there with the best.

In terms of sheer desirability, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has a brighter screen and slimmer, sexier profile, while the iPad 2 has its far larger library of tablet-specific apps to give it an edge. But we have to say Sony’s new baby runs them very close indeed.

Read more »

Archos 101 G9 Review

What do you want from a tablet? It's a question that many reviews want you to ask yourself before invariably buying an iPad 2 , but it's a question that's particularly relevant to the Archos 101 G9.

That's because Archos has focused on media playback for its latest machine, and it's done a pretty decent job of it. The Archos 101 G9 also happens to be a fully fledged Android 3.2 Honeycomb tablet at the same time. Plus there's the little point of cash - at £270 for 8GB, this is one of the most affordable Android 3.2 tablets that money can buy.

The obvious fear with any tablet focused on the budget market is that too many corners have been cut in order to bring it in at an iPad-destroying price point. But on paper, at least, there are no obvious miscarriages of silicon justice.

You get a 1GHz OMAP 4 dual-core processor courtesy of Texas Instruments, with a view to upgrading this to a faster 1.5GHz model in early 2012.

There are plenty of connection options - including a mini HDMI port, microSD slot and a standard micro USB port. And when it comes to the all-important display, you can rest assured that the 10.1-inch screen is capacitive (and responsive), and boasts a healthy native resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels.

The Archos 101 G9 comes in two different flavours, each defined by the storage options available. The basic unit packs 8GB of storage and has a list price of £270 (although you should be able to pick this up for around £250), while a 16GB model, the Archos 101 G9 Turbo, is going to be available at the start of 2012.

Potentially more interesting is the 250GB additional memory on the Archos 101 G9, which uses a traditional hard drive. This will obviously make the unit a little more fragile than your standard tablet, but for a media machine, that's plenty of space for hours and hours of movies.

Connection options for the base unit are limited to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth only, but Archos is keen to promote its 3G USB dongle that can be plugged into a special slot on the machine's underside. This doesn't make much sense if you're thinking of tethering this to your television, but it does enable you to extend the usefulness of the machine to compete against much more expensive options.

The dongle can be used with your PC as well, which ticks the versatility box nicely.

Archos has employed Android 3.2 on its 101 G9 tablet. Unlike previous tablets from Archos, this isn't a limited installation, and finally boasts full access to the Android Market.

This means you can install the swathes of applications, utilities and 3D games that appear on there - currently standing at some 300,000 apps, although the list of tablet-focused ones is still frustratingly low.

This isn't a Tegra 2 machine, but it doesn't seem to hold the Archos 101 G9 back too much when it comes to games - the likes of Dungeon Defendersworks fine, while the ubiquitous Angry Birds Rio is smooth.

The Archos 101 G9 ships with a suite of tools pre-installed that focus on the machine's main strength, media playback.

The Music tool replaces the standard Android offering, making for a far more visually appealing interface for handling your favourite tunes.

The Video utility is more impressive though, pulling metadata and posters down to make for a great way of viewing information about your films and TV shows.

You're not limited to simply playing your movies off the tablet either, as you can connect it to your Windows shares to stream movies. It will handle 1080p content without breaking into a sweat, and will handle plenty of the main formats.

You'll need a mini HMDI to HDMI cable to get the most from this machine, and while we would have liked one to be included in the package, it's probably asking a bit much at this price point.

Playing back movies on the machine itself is smooth, but we're not entirely sold on the screen. While most expensive tablets tend to use IPS panels, such screens are expensive, and so in order to hit that low price point, Archos has instead gone for a more traditional LCD TFT panel.

Cheaper tablets, such as the Hannspree Hannspad, tend to use budget TN panels, which suffer from appalling viewing angles. But there's none of that apparent here, even from extreme angles.

What there is, however, is a coarseness to the pixel pitch that doesn't sit quite so well with a tablet aimed at enjoying media. There's an underlying grid on the screen that, once seen, is really hard to ignore.

It knocks out the vibrant areas a little, but is most apparent in darker areas, where muddy greens and browns seem to win out if the source image is much more intense. Even if you're watching the machine at a relative distance (using the flimsy stand to hold the tablet at a comfortable viewing angle), it's still apparent.

If we're being picky, it would have been good to have a standard-sized USB port too, so that you could plug USB flash drives filled with media into it.

You can of course connect to your shared devices wirelessly, if you've been forward-thinking enough to set such things up. Plus, the micro USB charging cable enables you to transfer straight from a host PC, so it's not a great loss. Even so, given how most media players, Blu-ray players and even TVs boast USB ports these days, it is notable for its absence here.

This model is somewhat limited in the storage stakes, as well. Sure you can slide a microSD card in the waiting slot for an easy boost, but install a few applications on there (especially the larger 3D games, such as the aforementioned Dungeon Defenders), and you'll eat through what's left of the 8GB of storage.

There's a reason why most tablets boast at least 16GB, and that's before you start looking at the huge storage-gobbling media.

Sound on the whole is passable, if not particularly amazing. Long movie watching is better experienced through headphones, and the same goes for playing back music. If all you want to do is watch the odd YouTube video or listen to a bit of internet radio, though, it's adequate enough.

Battery life is good, managing five hours of use when playing back movies. Playing games will reduce this, while simple surfing should see this extended to as long as seven hours.

The built-in camera is probably the weakest element of the Archos 101 G9. Even in good light levels the quality of the images taken are woeful, and when used in the standard low-lighting of most houses, it's barely usable. In theory you could get by using it for video conferencing, but realistically you'd be better off simply not bothering.

There's no rear-facing camera either, so you can pretty much forget using it to capture memorable moments if you do manage to take it out of the house. Trying to guess what is in the frame without seeing the screen isn't really what we've come to expect from modern technology.

If you're looking for a tablet that can put in a decent turn as a source for your social networking, then there are plenty of better options available - even the iPad 2's camera, which is universally derided for its lighting capturing capabilities, is better than this. And frustrations aside, the quality of photos captured by the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 beats this hands down.

Build quality

There are plenty of plus points with the Archos 101 G9, and the odd negative, but to a certain degree these are all eclipsed by the tablet's chassis. It feels cheap, plasticy and generally not that impressive at all.

While the likes of the Asus Eee Pad Transformer has a solid chassis that feels like it can survive many knocks, this doesn't feel like it'd survive an unprotected trip in a handbag. The back of the unit flexes with even light pressure, while the stand that enables you to watch movies comfortably hands-free, bends worryingly easily.

The power and volume buttons don't have any positive feedback, and both of these are located exactly where you'd naturally want to hold the machine, which means they're prone to accidental pushing.

There aren't a lot of positives to mention for the physical implementation of the 3G dongle, either. The actual unit itself seems badly designed (requiring a side of the dongle to be removed so that it can slide into place). Once installed, this dongle needs to be eased out slightly from the main unit to improve reception as well. Given its location, this is less than ideal, too.

Possibly the most frustrating design choice, though, is that the screen sits behind a slight bezel. This means your finger will keep catching the edge of the screen surround when you're using it. It also looks far shoddier that it should do because of this design choice.

Why Archos felt the need to do it this way round, as opposed to having the glass screen in front of the machine's facia (like nearly every other tablet worth considering), is hard to fathom.

Regardless of what you've paid for your tablet, you don't actually want to it feel cheap. You want it to feel special, but you're not going to be showing off the Archos 101 G9 to anyone - which is a shame, because it is capable.

The Archos 101 G9 isn't an easy device to judge. Looked at purely in isolation, there's a lot to love here, thanks mainly to the fact that it handles media playback well. And that seemingly tempting price tag would appear to put the machine in a certain form of isolation.

There's a problem with the pricing though, and it's one that's going to be hard for Archos to solve. Essentially as the new Tegra platform, codenamed Kal-el, makes its way onto the market, that means that a whole host of existing machines are about to see some tempting price cuts.

These price cuts have already started to appear, and they're only going to continue. These cuts are leading other manufacturers to make much better hardware that costs only a few quid more and looks far more tempting than this clearly budget-focused system ever will.

Compare the Archos 101 G9 to a budget Motorola Xoom, and the two tablets feel poles apart, at least in terms of build quality and materials. It's true that the Archos is better built than most budget-focused machines, but ultimately it can't escape the price tag it has so clearly been built to.

We liked

A full Android 3.2 Honeycomb tablet at this price point is not to be sniffed at. Archos offers full access to the Android Market, at last, too.

The way your media is displayed in the Archos Video and Music apps is excellent, and thanks to album covers and movie posters, it produces an incredible experience. The fact that the Archos 101 G9 handles pretty much every format you could hope for is to be commended too.

Good connection options, with HDMI, microSD and micro USB ports, afford plenty of options for getting your media on and off the system.

A price that is far more tempting than the £400 standard that other manufacturers have decided is the entry price for the tablets. At £279 it's not the cheapest option, but it does offer more bang for your buck than its peers.

We disliked

The plastic chassis feels cheap, making it something you use for functional reasons, rather than something you want to shout about as a paradigm shift in computing (which for some, will be reason enough to buy it).

The camera is truly awful, and with only a screen-facing lens, this isn't great for capturing those odd moments that you can find yourself near something interesting with a tablet in your hand.

The screen is disappointing when viewing darker images and movies. There is an obvious underlying grid that makes smooth gradients turn into a brown muck.

Performance is lagging behind the competition, and while this doesn't appear to affect movie playback, going forward this is going to rule this tablet out of playing some games and handling certain apps smoothly.

Final verdict

The Archos 101 G9 sets out a specific stall for itself and does incredibly well at delivering on that goal, although only in a functional way. There's no innate joy or passion on show here.

If you're in the market for a capable tablet, but have a limited budget, then this is one of the best options outside of price cuts that you can get.

The potential problem is we're about to be bombarded by cut price tablets, and much better units can be had for this kind of cash - tablets with more memory, built from better materials and generally put together with more love!

Read more »

HTC Flyer Review

The tablet market is heating up and heating up fast. So what makes HTC think that it has what you need when it comes to a tablet? Some have called out some glaring spec shortcomings of the HTC Flyer. Can HTC overcome and weave its magic with HTC Sense? Is their first tablet “quietly brilliant”? We’ve been living with the new 7-inch tablet to find out how it stands against the competition.

Design

If you thought the iPad was a giant iPod touch, the first impression of the HTC Flyer is that it’s a giant phone. Measuring 195.4 x 122 x 13.2mm and weighing 420g the Flyer sports the company’s now familiar design; it is well built and solid in the hand. The front is dominated by the 7-inch capacitive touchscreen with a black bezel around the edge.

Like the BlackBerry PlayBook there are no buttons to distract - that is until you turn it on - and the only real tell-tale sign of which way is “up” is the HTC logo. While other tablets encourage you to hold them horizontally, like phones, the design intonation here tells you the best way to hold the tablet is vertically. That’s not to say you must hold it that way. Obviously HTC has designed it to be held in landscape as well, and that is expected when it comes to video calling as the front facing camera is at the top when held in landscape.

Those appearing and disappearing buttons (Home, menu, back, and pen - no search though) are a nice trick too. Hold it portrait and they appear at the bottom of the screen on that black bezel. Hold it landscape and they shift to the landscape bottom bezel. iPad users will be very jealous with their static physical home button that does nothing of the sort.

Switch around to the back and the UK version of the Flyer shows off it's silver and white colours. In the US the Flyer will sport a moody black and red paint job. (UK readers needn’t get excited: we’ve been told that paint job isn’t coming to Britain.) Another logo lets those who see you using it know just exactly what tablet you are using while the white elements of the design allow for the radio and wireless antenna to get a signal.

The top white area features the 5-megapixel camera, no flash, and sliding this off reveals the SIM card slot and a microSD slot for expanding the Flyer’s storage. Both are easily accessible and those who have opened up an HTC phone before (since the HTC Legend) will feel right at home. Not that you’re going to see this too often, as once you’ve loaded it up with a SIM for surfing and some storage it’s unlikely this cover will ever come off again. The battery is sealed out of sight and inaccessible. Volume buttons, a power switch (which also has a notification light in it), Micro-USB and 3.5mm jack complete the package.

In the flesh it is comfortable to hold with one hand. It’s small enough to type on with two thumbs, and yes, you could slip it into your back jeans pocket, although we wouldn’t recommend sitting down. On the train and in the home we’ve found that we hold it differently to the iPad, and because of that it’s not as isolating, you aren’t so shut off from the world because its less of a physical barrier and that means you probably won’t be as self-conscious about getting it out in public.

As for the size, like the BlackBerry PlayBook and the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the 7-inches compared to the Motorola Xoom and iPad 2’s larger screen certainly makes a difference, this is more like a paperback book than a full screen laptop without a keyboard, and that changes the experience dramatically.

Specs

Let’s get the bad bits out of the way first: it’s not dual-core and it’s not Honeycomb. That means it is at a disadvantage compared to the likes of the Motorola Xoom or the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, happy to tout their Honeycomb wares, or other tablets coming on the market that are more powerful with a dual-core chipset. That’s not to say it’s a slouch though, the Flyer still packs a 1.5GHz processor, and 1GB of RAM meaning it zips along just fine.

Apps opened quickly, although there is a noticeable lag compared to our Samsung Galaxy S II. It’s not enough to break the bank over, but it’s a good split second slower doing menial tasks like opening the gallery. Getting around the Sense interface isn’t a problem and we didn’t experience any problems in loading Flash in the browser. While the power may not be a problem now, it could be that apps designed for dual core processors in the future may not work so well.  

You get 32GB of internal storage (there is a 16GB version too), the microSD slot we’ve already talked about allows expansion up to 64GB in total and the 5-megapixel camera on the back in addition to the 1.3-megapixel camera on the front.

Camera performance on stills is okay but not great. It’s an afterthought rather than a must-have, but then you probably aren’t getting this for its camera performance anyway. That’s a good job too as the camcorder’s capabilities are even worse, the camera struggling in our tests to produce anything remarkable. You can apply affects like sepia or negative as is standard for HTC devices. As for the front facing camera the capture angle is fairly wide - great for video conferencing (you still can’t do video via Skype). You won’t have to hold it out at arms length to have a conversation.

On the connectivity front you get HSPA/WCDMA, Quad-band, and wireless connectivity in the guise of 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS. Don’t for one minute think that you’ll be able to make a call though. The Flyer might have a SIM card, but like the iPad it is not a phone and HTC hasn’t included phone capabilities. That won’t stop you making a call via Skype or other VoIP services, but that SIM is for data only. The Flyer also has the ability to be turned into a wireless hotspot for up to eight devices. Sensors include a digital compass, and a g-sensor, although no barometer (like the Xoom) and no NFC.

Battery life is a promised 4 hours video playback. We found we could get through a good day on a single charge, using it fairly heavily for web applications. Battery will depend on what you do with it of course, but it is better than many the company’s phones.

Media, music, and more

A 7-inch screen makes it perfect for watching movies and content on the go - it’s a really nice size. Most video codecs are supported and you get to watch them in the standard ways available to you via Sense. That means 3GP, 3G2, MPEG4, WMV, AVI (MP4 ASP and MP3), Xvid (MP4 ASP and MP3) are all supported covering most options. The Flyer supports playback up to 720p and we had no problems doing that.

Besides importing your own content, there are plenty of other options too. A quick visit to the BBC iPlayer lets you watch all the content thanks to Flash support built-in to the browser.The Apprentice here we come…

But wait, there’s more. HTC has also introduced a new movie download and streaming service, which has debuted on the Flyer. Watch is for buying tracks on the go and lets you download 720p movies (just make sure you’re on Wi-Fi).

HTC’s answer to iTunes movies (and soon to be launched Google Movies) is Watch. It is currently a series of trailers in a Cover Flow design that you can … watch. Although the app is there, the service is still to be turned on in the UK. However a sneak peak before we updated to the final ROM (that will be available on retail units) showed us that it's a easy to use and currently has around 100 movies and TV shows to rent or download.

Rentals vary in price, but the average seemed to be £2.49, while movies to buy cost around a tenner. Not all are available to rent, and we will make sure we cover this in more depth when it launches properly in the UK. (Sadly we didn’t get a screenshot expecting the access to still be available in the final ROM.) Likewise OnLive, HTC’s gaming service isn’t present either, presumably because it is not ready yet, so we were unable to test this.

Streaming is quick and as long as HTC can get decent movies on the service you’ll want to watch - at the moment it’s classics like Ferris Burris Day Off or Napoleon Dynamite, then this has strong potential for the travel bound tablet fan.

Sharing all this content is easy. You either get to watch it on the screen, or fire it out across your living room to other supported media devices like your DLNA TV or a media player on the network - it worked very well with our Sonos system with music, for example.

When it comes to music there too are a number of options on the device before you have to start enlisting the help of services like Spotify. Amazon MP3 is pre-loaded. The music player has been re-designed to benefit from the landscape view with your playlists and tracks on the left and what’s playing on the right.

Twin stereo speakers might be found on the rear of the Flyer, but this doesn’t seem to affect the sound quality, which can be switched from Stereo to SRS where available. The quality is good, certainly better than we expected, and the speaker placement uses the curve in the design of the back of the player to bounce off the table if lying flat, although at an angle is pushed away from you. The PlayBook’s front facing speakers produce a better sound.

The pen is mightier than the sword

Helping the HTC Flyer to stand out from the tablet crowd is the Magic Pen that comes in the box. The stylus, pen, scribe, digitiser, or whatever you call it comes in the box (for Best Buy customers in the US it won’t) and gives you a secondary level of input beyond your finger.

The idea is that you can use the Magic Pen to jot down notes quickly by writing them rather than having to operate a keyboard - something that’s not hard here because of the Flyer’s size and the very good keyboard with decent autocorrect anyway. The pen is activated by pressing on a small green icon next to those shifting buttons we mentioned earlier. When it’s red then the pen is no good to you and you’ll have to put it away.

The app will dictate the level of input the pen gives you. Currently the pen only works with two apps shipped on the device, both from HTC, although HTC has said that third party developers can get involved. Those apps include Notes, a service HTC has teamed up with Evernote to create, and Reader, HTC’s ebook reading app allowing you to make notes or highlight text.

Furthermore, and this will be welcomed by anyone that’s ever tried to do a screenshot on Android, you can use the pen at any time to take an instant screenshot of what’s going on. (The only place we’ve found that it doesn’t work is in HTC’s Watch application, and we presume this is because of the copyright issues.) Why would you need to take a screenshot of a page and then draw on it? Well for web developers making constant mark-ups on a website design we can see this being very handy - especially when you can Dropbox the results straight away.

So that’s the theory, what about the actuality? The first problem we encountered is that the Flyer doesn’t have a place for the pen to live. There is no hidden stylus sheath in which it tucks. Perhaps realising this, HTC have bundled a leather case with the device that has a slot for the pen. It means you won’t necessarily lose it in the first 10 minutes, but it’s something that you need to bear in mind.

The pen itself is akin to an expensive Biro and features two buttons on the side, which act as function buttons. Thanks to some clever technology in the screen itself the Flyer knows when it is being touched by the pen or by the finger. That means that if you are using the pen your hand won’t trigger random actions. That said, the main focus on interaction on the Flyer is still by the finger touch.

The first couple of times you try to press something with the pen that you aren’t able to, it politely tells you are doing it wrong. The pen instead controls a small dial that appears in the bottom right-hand corner, accessible by tapping on the green logo we told you about earlier. That reveals a series of options from what pen type to choose, the colour and size. There are eight primary colours, six pen types and five different sizes. Beyond that there are options for toggling on and off your marks, deleting them altogether or if you’re looking for something slightly less severe the ability to redo or undo.

In use and the pen is very responsive, easy to use, and works as you would expect a pen to work. HTC has found a balance between weight and size of the pen itself and if it had the ability to write on paper as well, you wouldn’t think that it was a dedicated digital pen (aside from those buttons). Using the pen to make notes is easy and then sharing those notes via HTC’s Sense UI easier still, but you have to ask how much value it really offers and whether you are going to actually use it.

We suspect it’s the latter, for while it works, we personally can’t see the need to doodle, or highlight text. Ditch the pen and it’s a giant phone, no really it really is. But then that’s us and we acknowledge that that won’t be the case for many individual whether it’s designers sketching or just annotating notes. The technology works, you’ve just got to find a use.

Apps

For those worried that the HTC Flyer might not offer much more beyond the pen you shouldn’t be. The HTC Flyer has HTC Sense for Tablets at its core. Along with all the normal HTC goodness, you get dedicated apps like Watch, a new tablet variation of mail that splits the view into two panes to make best use of the available space, and other features like Kid Mode by Zoodles that makes your tablet child-friendly.

You might not get Honeycomb (although HTC has promised an update soon), but the company has done all that it can to cover up that fact thanks to HTC Sense. That’s not to say the experience is perfect. The Gmail app (as opposed to the standalone email client) isn’t “tabletised” and other apps don’t benefit in the same way their Honeycomb offerings do. But when it comes to HTC Sense features, they’ve done all they can.

There is of course much more to the new Sense for tablets: there’s the new homescreen unlocking mechanism when you turn the device on; SnapBooth which is a way of showing you a stack of effects the camera can produce; Evernote, the note taking software that lets you share notes with people and yourself via the web; and Kid Mode thanks to an app provided by Zoodles that locks down the Flyer so your kids can’t cause chaos if you leave it with them. Others include Polaris Office, PDF Viewer, Amazon MP3 player, Navigation, and many more.

As we’ve said, core apps get a upgrade, the keyboard now features a better auto correct feature that certainly gives SwiftKey a challenge and this can be used in portrait or landscape mode, but the landscape doesn’t drastically change to use the space to best effect. The keys are bigger, or wider, and that's about it.

Regardless - find anyone with an HTC device and we are sure they’ll wax lyrical about the apps and features of the operating system they have. Much of it is the same whether that’s Market, News and Weather, Navigation, Weather, or Stocks. Yes some get a slight change for the tablet version, but the core experience is the same.

For a fuller, longer, in-depth detailing of some of the new apps it’s worth reading our HTC Interface walkthrough we wrote after a detailed play with the new features with HTC and a Flyer back in February.

Verdict

The HTC Flyer is a giant phone without the phone calling capabilities, just as the iPad 2 is a giant iPhone without the calling capabilities. The Flyer sports HTC Sense, it has the same aspect ratio as a phone, and even runs a phone operating system (Android 2.3.3). By those terms it means that its competitors are the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the Dell Streak 7, the ViewSonic and Archos tablets and a whole range of mediocre products in-between. But to bundle it in that category would do the HTC Flyer a disservice: it is better than that and it deserves more attention, thanks to the full inclusion of Android Market and the niceties of Sense.

The lack of Honeycomb is something that HTC has said it’s fixing. Doing so, while HTC won’t admit this, will make a massive difference in the way apps are viewed and work. Android Honeycomb makes native Android apps, like Gmail or the browser, work much better on a larger screen. Of course it also brings with it a change to notifications and optimised menus, which may well leave HTC with a lot of work to do to make Honeycomb and Sense gel together.

If you’re already a HTC Sense user then you’re going to love it. It is like HTC has taken your phone and supersized it, literally, bringing you a stack of new features all around the same core experience that you know and love. The HTC Sense users we’ve shown it to have all got very excited and no one so far has had anything bad to say about the Flyer, even when we mention the pen.

It’s a well polished, well built tablet. HTC has been clever here. This is a tablet for those that don’t necessarily want the latest features of Android, want the experience their HTC phone gives them, but essentially want something that will work, work well, and ultimately be familiar to those who have bought into the HTC lifestyle already.

Review Recap

MADE BY

HTC

PRICE AS REVIEWED

£599.99

LATEST PRICE

Compare mobile deals

THE GOOD

Pen, size, build quality

THE BAD

No Honeycomb, not dual core, no space for the pen on the actual device

QUICK VERDICT

This is a tablet for those that don’t necessarily want the latest features of Android, but do want something that will work, work well, and ultimately be familiar

KEY SPECS

3.5mm jack, 3G, 5 megapixels, Android, Bluetooth, GPRS, GPS, GSM, HSDPA, Li-ion battery, microSD, Wi-Fi

SCORE

Read more »