HTC Flyer Review

The good: Fans of 7-inch tablets will appreciate the HTC Flyer's screen quality, durable construction, HD video recording, and unique features, such as digital pen compatibility and HTC's Sense UI customization.

The bad: The Flyer is small, thick, and pricey, and isn't running Google's Android 3.0 tablet OS. Its most unique feature, the Magic Pen, may not come included and is expensive to replace.

The bottom line: The HTC Flyer puts a new spin on the 7-inch Android tablet, but its high price and smartphone-style OS are a tough sell next to its bigger, cheaper Honeycomb kin.

While the rest of the industry is rushing to produce 10-inch tablets that compete directly against the Apple iPad 2, HTC is throwing out a curveball called the HTC Flyer. Using a 7-inch screen and running Android 2.3, the HTC Flyer feels like an echo of 2010's Samsung Galaxy Tab. Its pricing is also a little behind the times, with a 16GB model priced at $499 in a time when dual-core 10-inch tablets can be had for a hundred dollars less.

Does the Flyer have its head in the sand, or is this portable 7-inch tablet worth every penny? Let's take a look.

Hardware design
The Flyer looks and feels like a high-end take on the Samsung Galaxy Tab. The 7-inch screen size and surrounding bezel are identical, but HTC wraps its tablet in iPad-like aluminum with two strips of nonslip rubber padding on the back. With a little brute force, the topmost rubber fitting can be removed to reveal a microSD memory expansion slot, which is a convenient design trick adopted from the world of smartphones.

Across the bottom of the screen you'll find the typical trio of Android smartphone navigation buttons (Home, Menu, and Back) along with an illuminated button that responds only to HTC's optional Magic Pen accessory, which we'll explain in the next section. One impressive feature of the navigation controls is that they'll reorient to the bottom of the screen regardless of whether you're holding the tablet in portrait or landscape. It's a neat and practical trick, and one we haven't seen before. That said, it's a trick that today's Android 3.0 tablets don't need to employ, since all navigation is moved to the screen.

On the top edge of the Flyer you'll find a headphone jack and a power button/screen lock. The right edge offers an ample-size volume rocker along with two pinhole microphones. The back holds a pair of small speaker grilles and a 5-megapixel camera lens capable of HD video recording (though lacking an integrated flash).

On the bottom edge of the Flyer is a unique 12-pin Micro-USB port, compatible with the included USB sync cable and charging adapter. At first blush, we found it annoying that HTC would use a specialized connector for syncing and charging, but it turns out that our old trusty five-pin Micro-USB (type B) cable works just fine. All those extra pins are just there for HTC's line of audio/video output accessories. In the end, it's a model example of how manufacturers can maintain basic connection standards, while still incorporating specialized accessories.

Overall, the HTC Flyer is a solidly built little tablet with a lot of attention paid to details. But in comparison with Apple's highly successful iPad 2, the HTC Flyer is relatively thick and its screen area is around half that of the iPad. There's an argument to be made for tablets with the Flyer's smaller, more portable screen size, but for us, the experience often overlaps too much with using a smartphone and still feels constricted for Web browsing.

The back of the HTC Flyer is a mixture of aluminum and white rubber, offering durability and an expensive feel.

Features
As a 7-inch tablet running Android 2.3, the Flyer doesn't show us much we haven't seen on the Samsung Galaxy Tab running Android 2.2. Granted, we do appreciate HTC's Sense UI customizations for social network feeds and commonly used applications (Mail, Internet, Stocks, Weather, Reader), but that hardly makes up for the $150 premium over the Tab. There are a few little things that made us smile, such as Adobe Flash 10.1 being preinstalled, and the browser's default setting to load full sites instead of their mobile-optimized versions. Still, these are refinements of an OS designed for smartphones, at a time when Google is pushing a distinctly different OS (Honeycomb) for use on tablets. It's going too far to say that HTC is putting lipstick on a pig, but HTC is definitely putting considerable effort into dressing up Android 2.3 to make it tablet-worthy.

Thank you:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/best-buy-launching-wi-fi-htc-flyer-may-22/
http://www.mobilegazette.com/htc-flyer-11x02x15.htm
http://www.letsgodigital.org/en/28700/htc-flyer/
http://www.businessinsider.com/htc-flyer-tablet-launching-at-best-buy-may-22-2011-5
http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/htc-flyer/4505-3126_7-34505385.html?tag=productCarousel;carouselOverviews#reviewPage1

Asus Eee Pad Transformer (16GB, Wi-Fi) Review

The good: At $400, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer has the lowest price of any Honeycomb tablet. Also, its high-quality screen and relatively cheap keyboard/dock make it an attractive option.

The bad: A few things keep the Transformer from completely blowing us away: the choppy recording and playback of the camcorder; its sharp edges; a build quality that's somewhat lacking; and problems that arise when docking.

The bottom line: The Asus Eee Pad Transformer is a low-price, quality Honeycomb tablet with useful options.

Tablets are still a hard sell to most, but one of the most important factors is price. The lower the price (without being too low to raise suspicions of quality), the more likely consumers are willing to part with their money.

At $400, the 16GB, Wi-Fi-only version of the Asus Eee Pad Transformer is the cheapest Honeycomb tablet on the market and undercuts the lowest price iPad 2 by $100. But, what sacrifices did Asus make to get it that low?

Design and features
Before even powering up the Asus Eee Pad Transformer, we were struck by its wider-than-normal left and right bezel, each measuring about 1.1 inches. That's a lot wider than the Motorola Xoom's 0.5-inch bezel. We also noticed that the Transformer is the longest of the new generation of tablets, measuring a full 10.7 inches in width compared with the Xoom's 9.8 inches. Make no mistake, this is a large tablet; it's the largest Honeycomb tablet we've seen, in fact.

I thought of writing a superlong paragraph detailing dimension differences between the latest tablets, but that's what charts are for. Here's a handy chart to illustrate the size differences between the Transformer and other recent tablets.

	Asus Eee Pad Transformer	Acer Iconia Tab A500	Motorola Xoom	Apple iPad 2	T-Mobile G-Slate
Weight	1.52	1.66	1.62	1.34	1.38
Width (in landscape)	10.7	10.2	9.8	9.5	9.6
Height	6.9	6.9	6.6	7.3	5.8
Depth	0.51	0.51	0.5	0.34	0.49
Side bezel width (in landscape)	1.1	0.8	0.6	0.8	0.9

Complementing the Transformer's wide-screen aspect ratio is a 10.1-inch 1,280x800-pixel capacitive touch display. As a result, we felt more comfortable holding it in landscape orientation. Unfortunately, the corners and edges of the tablet aren't rounded and smoothed off like they are on the G-Slate or Xoom, for example, and while holding the tablet, we felt the corners slowly cutting into our palms. Not nearly enough to draw blood or anything, but enough to convince us we'd rather hold a less aggressive tablet.

At first glance, the build quality of the Transformer seems solid enough; however, pushing in on its backside with even just a medium level of pressure yielded a bit too much give, making it feel a lot less substantial than the G-Slate or Xoom. The Transformer's textured, almost snakeskin backside provides an added level of grip compared with silky smooth tablets like the iPad 2, which are prone to slippage at times.

Speakers are located on the left and right sides. The requisite two cameras are here as well; there's a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera and a 5-megapixel rear-facing one. Both are located near the top center of the device.

On the right side are the microSD card slot, a Mini-HDMI port, a microphone pinhole, and a headphone jack. On the left are the power/lock button and volume rocker. The bottom houses the 40-pin connector for charging the battery or connecting to a PC for data transfer, but unfortunately, no USB port is included. This is may be an intentional oversight that may incentivize the purchase of the keyboard/dock accessory.

Once attached, the Transformer's $150 keyboard/docking station option transforms the tablet into what could be considered a Honeycomb Netbook. The keyboard includes a full array of keys and a multitouch touch pad. It also includes two USB ports, an SD card reader port, and its own battery. The keys feel soft, snappy, and are wide enough and spaced far enough apart to provide comfortable use by someone with larger-than-average hands. Like on a MacBook, two fingers are used to scroll up and down on Web pages via the touch pad.

Attempting to properly connect the keyboard to the tablet can be a highly frustrating experience. There are no markers to assist you in lining up the two pieces, and you essentially have to slide the tablet around until you feel it connect. Also, in order to get the tablet to lock into the dock, we had to push down fairly hard on it.

The usual suspects of tablet features are available with the Transformer, including Bluetooth 2.1 for audio and peripheral support. The Wi-Fi antenna supports bands up to 802.11n. Embedded sensors for screen brightness, accelerometer, and gyroscope are all included.

With no cellular option, the Transformer is a Wi-Fi-only tablet. A 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core mobile processor and 16GB of storage round out the specs.

Honeycomb
Up until the Xoom, every Android tablet we'd reviewed suffered from behaving too much like a smartphone. Google's mobile operating system, its apps, and its developer tools were all geared for the small screen, and it showed.

With the introduction of Android 3.0 (aka Honeycomb), Google is showing its commitment to tablets. With the exception of legacy support for existing Android apps, Honeycomb is a dramatic departure from the Android of smartphones.

Even experienced Android users will need some time to get accustomed to Honeycomb's navigation. Gone is the familiar four-button navigation across the bottom of the screen. Contextual menus and options are accessed through the top of the screen, notifications pop out from the lower right, and the trusty old back arrow will occasionally morph into a down arrow when the keyboard is engaged, allowing you to conceal or reveal the keyboard.

Thank you :
http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/asus-eee-pad-transformer/4505-3126_7-34467853.html?tag=contentBody;edPicks#reviewPage1
http://milandesignweek2011.asus.com/archives/ces-2011/asus-tablet-computers-providing-choice-through-innovation-at-ces-2011/
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http://www.greatereader.org/posts/tablet/asus-eee-pad-slider-transformer-and-memo-shown-at-cebit-2011-priced-for-europe_19233.html
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