Upon the release of the iPad, both the first and second iterations, many websites and people themselves were calling the device a giant iPod Touch. Those people had legitimate reasoning: It ran a very similar operating system to the iPhone and iPod Touch, and really didn’t have a lot more functionality. But one thing it did have was a higher resolution display and a much more complex and intense SDK, the latter which really made use of the screen real-estate the iPad had (and of course, still has). Go into the App Store, and it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll find applications for the iPad that its smartphone counterpart doesn’t have, such as a Photoshop extension application, or an application to extend your Mac’s display, and also allow you to control it using the iPad’s screen. The iPad was really more than an iPod Touch. Oh and it had 3G. The iPod Touch does not have that.
Now onto the main subject: The HTC Flyer. Not much hype surrounded this product, but HTC fans were and are really excited about this product. That cool stylus pen it has applies a great deal of added functionality that you could not have on…wait, Houston, we have a problem. The tablet doesn’t have anything more than the Thunderbolt, Evo 4G, or Incredible 2 offers. In fact, in some respects, it has quite a bit less. The sub-par 5 megapixel camera and a different sort of back-plate/cover make this tablet really…um…not as good as it’s many phone counterparts. The 1024×600 screen resolution is great, but only when you have applications that make use of it, which brings me to my main point. Android, as everyone knows, stretches itself and it’s applications to fit your screen resolution. It more does this sort of extending of title bars, increasing of font size, and other sort of things that help, but don’t create that sort of unique experience you might get with a tabletified version of an operating system, such as using Honeycomb. If HTC offered a sort of SDK for applications (so that such take use of the screen resolution), it would make things better — but they don’t, and until they do, I don’t personally see this tablet as a viable option for us nerds, or any other person looking for uniqueness.
A great example of this is the Facebook application. Run that application on any Honeycomb tablet right now, and you’ll get what you see above: Nothing special, I know. The same features, the same layout, and the same ol’ icons as the phone app. Not good: The device (the Flyer and any other Android Tablet) needs to have tablet applications, not smartphone applications. This was clearly addressed in Honeycomb, but for phone makers who stuck with 2.2 or 2.3 as their main OS, it was not addressed. When I use a tablet, I want better use of screen real-estate, and better, more advanced features. Shouldn’t be too hard, right? Bring on Honeycomb HTC, and you’ll have yourself a winner.
And for those wondering: everything I said here applies to the old Galaxy Tab, but of course the 8.9 and 10.1 have Honeycomb so everything is cool there.
