Our pal Chris Davies over at Slashgear has a solid unboxing video featuring the upcoming HTC Flyer [tracking page]. We’ve got lots of upcoming coverage for this device, but this is a great way to get a jump-start on becoming familiar with this very interesting 7 inch tablet.
I’m happy to see that the Flyer includes a good-looking case. It’s been far too long since I’ve seen any decent included accessories in today’s tablet-world.
Chris’s video will take you through the box and into the software for a brief look at the totally new HTC Sense and you’ll see some stylus action.
I’m really disappointed to see that the stylus doesn’t work system-wide. As you’ll see in the video, there are times where the stylus can be used for some things, but the finger has to be used for others. I’ve seen such issues before on the Nokia N810; it creates a bothersome disconnect between finger/stylus input usage for the end-user. This could likely be fixed through software, but it’s going to cause some annoyance for people who are interested in using the stylus.
I think the issue with the N810 was that some ui elements where too small to reliably hit with a finger. Then again the ui on it was designed for stylus first and then later got finger elements (larger launch and browser bookmarks menus) added later Nokia toyed with finger only interaction. Hell, one of the later firmwares for the 770 had a launcher menu that would come up large if one used finger and small if one used stylus. And to this day one can (unreliably) open the full screen keyboard if one hit a text input area with a flat finger.
The issue here seems more in common with the tablet pc where one had it swap to and from the various sensors, use the stylus and it stops reacting to the finger and so on.