Pen pal
Something the Flyer has, that the tablets from Samsung, Asus, Apple and the rest of the boys in the band don’t, is a stylus and for once this is a Very Good Thing. The Flyer’s battery-powered pen and HTC Scribe software lets you doodle on screen-grabs or make notes and drawings which can then be saved to the cloud using Evernote. Hopefully other apps like Catch Notes will be supported in due course.
The pen is mightier than the pinkie..?
The stylus can be set to imitate pen, pencil, felt-pip or paint brush and you can vary the nib thickness and colour making it altogether rather versatile. The buttons on the pen let you swap between write and erase. There’s no slot for the stylus – lose it and you are looking at £48 for a new one – but included with the Flyer is a rather smart wallet that has a pen-holder stitched to it.
Home screen and transition
Highlighting pages with the Stock browser's pen menu and tabs. Viewing the Watch film service – a bit pricey though
Front and rear cameras come in at 1.3 and 5Mp, respectively. The former is mounted above the screen when the device is held in landscape, but since the Flyer runs Android 2.3.3, rather than 2.3.4, you can’t use the webcam to take advantage of Google Talk’s recently announced support of video chat. Qik worked a treat though, so it’s not the end of the world.