HTC first announced its upcoming Flyer tablet would release with Android 2.4 on board, or at best Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread, instead of the regular Android 3.0 Honeycomb fare that the rest of the major manufacturers will offer on their tablets. Now it’s announced on Twitter that it will be introducing an Honeycomb update for the HTC Flyer tablet, as soon as its “available.”
Chief among purported reasons for the delay is Google’s apprehension of a majorly HTC Sense skinned-UI for Honeycomb, but with Samsung’s own toppings to the Galaxy Tab 10.1, we’re a bit sceptical of this hesitation, especially since HTC usually does a great job. Interestingly, the original Android 2.4 speculation pointed towards its being the unifying operating system, which brought the best of both tablet and phone worlds to Android devices. A LG Nexus tablet is also rumoured to be the platform’s lead device. What’s most likely is that HTC itself wanted some more time to integrate Sense into Android 3.0, to Google’s satisfaction.
[RELATED_ARTICLE]Operating system notwithstanding, the 7-inch HTC Flyer still looks great on paper, with some rather decent specs powering it on – a 1.5GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 32GB onboard storage, along with a 5MP rear and 1.3MP front camera. It runs on a 4000mAh battery that should give up to four hours of continuous video playback. It also features Timemark audio recording, and the OnLive game service.
The tablet is also one of the few, apart from Asus Eee Pad MeMo to support a capacitive pen, with its ‘Scribe’ stylus technology . Lastly, the tablet’s skinned with the latest HTC Sense 2.1 UI, of which you can get a official preview below, on top of what looks like Honeycomb, in a newly released HTC Flyer video introduction: