HTC Flyer: a tablet that’s always at handfrom Peter Wolf, trend scout and journalist, Ringier Ltd.

How best describe the size of the HTC Flyer? About the size of a paperback? Half the size of an iPad? Three times the size of an iPhone? All of these answers are correct.

Its size is the best thing about the Flyer: it’s large enough to be used as a tablet, yet small enough to be taken everywhere. With dimensions of 195x122x13 mm, it will even fit into the back pocket of your jeans. It is no larger and just 5 mm thicker than the Amazon Kindle that I usually have with me all the time for reading. Now I can read on the Flyer, as it has a built-in e-book reader that allows you to purchase books from the Kobo shop. The Kindle app for reading books can also be installed if desired. What’s more, a free app from Comixology allows you to buy and read comics in full colour.

There is another preinstalled app called “Notes”. This electronic notepad not only lets you type, integrate photos (the Flyer has a 5-megapixel autofocus camera at the back and a 1.3-megapixel camera at the front), record sound and link the whole thing to a calendar entry (which can come in very handy when making notes at a meeting or when you need to store ideas in a structured manner). You can even draw in the notepad using a pen. In fact, it is the pen that makes the tablet so unique. It’s an active digitizer containing an AAAA battery (I must admit that this is the first time I’ve come across such extremely thin batteries). Using the slender pen, you can do drawings, write comments, underline or mark text, and create or edit screenshots.

Unfortunately, the greatest shortcoming of the Flyer also concerns the pen, namely that there is no secure place to keep it inside the casing. Instead, you are forced to entrust this expensive part to a loop outside the case. Otherwise there isn’t much at all to complain about: you can use any micro USB cable to recharge the battery, and the same goes for connecting to the computer. This is rarely actually necessary, as the tablet runs with the Android operating system, which exchanges data and information predominantly via cloud and therefore isn’t reliant on a PC. Nevertheless, it is sometimes practical to transfer data directly using a cable, for instance to copy your music collection or large videos. Podcasts on the other hand can also be loaded via WLAN or the mobile phone network.

When you want to watch films on your own, the 7-inch display is just the right size, and also lies well in your hand. It may perhaps be a little too small to entertain the whole family. But, the minitablet is a personal working tool really anyway. The adress book, e-mail program and calendar have been ideally adapted to the screen size. Even in portrait format, the virtual keypad is large enough to be able to type accurately. You are additionally aided by the tangible vibration feedback. And if you have trained the dictionary a little and trust the text prediction, you can type amazingly quickly on the display.

This makes the Flyer a perfect working tool, just like any other Android smartphone. However, thanks to the size of its display, it also makes a fantastic entertainment centre and reader.

• Comixology Comics: thousands of US comics which, thanks to Guided View™ technology, are very user friendly to read. (free)
• Beyond Pod: downloads feeds, as well as podcasts and vodcasts, for viewing on the smartphone. (7 days free of charge, then around CHF 5.-)
• Pulse News: RSS reader that displays feeds (and also Facebook status messages) in an attractive way. (free)
• Amazon Kindle: buy and read electronic books. (free)
• SoundHound: finds out the title of the song that is currently being played somewhere, obtains the lyrics and allows you to buy the song. (free or CHF 3.80)
• Evernote: saves notes, photos and information online, allowing you to access them again anywhere. (free)
• Tower Raiders Gold: a good tower defence game. (CHF 3.05)