HTC introduced Flyer’s successor, EVO View 4G tablet model. It has much in common with HTC Flyer, with a few changes. The new tablet has 3G and 4G support and slightly more polished design than its predecessor. Let’s look deeper inside the gadget to define whether it is a worthy newcomer to a tablet market.
Design
HTC EVO View 4G combines typical Flyer design with special EVO line colour scheme – charcoal body with elegant red exterior details. In general new EVO looks more elegant than Flyer, featuring aluminium body with ideally assembled parts. Yes, it is really a good looking and nice to touch tablet. There are plastic pats on the top and bottom body sides. You can see microSD slot plaxtic cover on the top. The bottom plastic insert creates a handy hold for hands when the device is used in landscape mode.
HTC EVO View 4G weights 425 grams. Such weight is justified by durable metal body and glass screen cover. These high-quality materials will provide good wear resistance for the tablet that is often used on the move. 7 inches display with its 1024×600 px resolution seems better than the most of HTC smartphones. It is bright, with clear and sharp image and excellent viewing angles. Below the display you will find for buttons – Home, Back, Menu and Scribe Pen. Regardless on the tablet orientation, landscape or portrait, these buttons will be always located below the screen.
The top body side features 3.5 mm audio jack and Power button. Volume controls, microUSB port is located on the bottom side. The back panel features the lens of 5MP camera and 2 cutouts for loudspeakers, surrounded with red fillet.
In general HTC EVO View 4G is well constructed device in both design and assembly. The problem is that it is not resistive to fingerprints. It is better to get used to it than to try keeping it constantly clean.
Software
The manufacturer equipped HTC EVO View 4G with its new Sense 3.0 interface, the same as in HTC Sensation and EVO 3D. Compared with previous interface version, this one features much bigger display space for widgets in portrait mode. For instance, if you set a calendar widget it will occupy the top two thirds of the display, showing you month view. When you turn the gadget to the side, the interface will automatically rotate by 90 degrees. In landscape mode the widgets have less space. Larger display didn’t influenced on the menu structure – it is still 4×4 grid of icons that can be found in many Android mobile phones. In the tablet there is much free space between the menu items.
Being rather handy in use, Sense still has shortcomings compared with Honeycomb. For instance, when you browse the Android Market, you will clearly see that Android 2.3 is not optimized specifically for tablets, as there is always a wish to make fonts and images bigger for more comfortable look. Not all applications support full screen mode properly, there are often some discrepancy in proportions. Another shortcoming of the current software version is the lack of Google Talk service. It is available only starting from 2.3.4 version, while EVO View 4G runs only Android 2.3.3. Even updated to 2.3.4 with new firmware package, there was no GTalk).
A really impressive feature is HTC Scribe pen. It is provided in EVO View 4G by default, while being sold separately for HTC Flyer at $80. This feature provides user with ability to make freehand notes while browsing websites and do lots of other interesting things. For instance, you can tap the screen with stylus in Scribe pen mode to get a screenshot of the current web page or any other activity on the screen. Then this screenshot can be scribbled on. There are a lot of writing settings like colour and size of pen, etc.
Connectivity
HTC EVO View 4G supports Sprint WiMAX network. When tested in action, the new EVO showed similar data transfer speeds for up and downloading, the built-in module provides stable network connection without any flows. The gadget also supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0, as well as GPS.
The integrated web browser works rather good, loading the web pages with complex content quickly, even when there are a lot of Flash elements. Scrolling, as well as zooming features also work fine, very handy in use.
Camera
The interface for camera is similar as in HTC Flyer. User has a few manually adjustable parameters such as contrast, exposure, sharpness and saturation. Various add-ons are also supported, such as face detection or geo-tagging. The camera performance is not perfect. 5MP shooter made photos with the lack of detailing, even on the bright daylight. Of course, camera is not the main part of big internet tablet, but actually such a perfect device as HTC EVO is expected to be good in every offered feature. The camera is able to shoot 720p videos that are also have mid-level quality, as photos.
In the landscape mode there is an ability to view media content in two-column way. One part displays the content list, while the other one is for the playback. OF course, there is an ability to view photos and videos in full screen mode. Viewing videos on the 7 inches display is great. There were no problems with media content playback, no delays or something like this occurred. In this part HTC EVO View 4G has flawless performance.
General Impressions
HTC EVO View 4G seems to be well-built tablet with handy intuitive interface. 7 inches display covered with glass, aluminium body cover look stylish and provide excellent wear-resistance. This is where functionality is perfectly combined with the design. The battery life is enough for two days of active tablet use. Always unique in its innovations, HTC equipped its gadget with interesting HTC Scribe Pen feature that has no analogues on the market. The only disadvantage is that HTC EVO View 4G doesn’t run tablet-optimized Google software, using Sense 3.0 interface instead it. It is not critical, as Sense itself is also a worthy solution. The verdict is definite YES to such device as HTC EVO View 4G on the world tablet market.
