Not gonna lie, when I first heard about HTC's MWC announcements, I came away very disappointed in the lack of a dual-core monster or Honeycomb tablet. But the more I read about the Flyer, the more in love I am. A capacitive touchscreen with a stylus for note taking? Consider me SOLD. As a student, I can see how this device is absolutely PERFECT for me. The stylus can essentially replace the notebook as I can see myself taking all my notes in that (assuming HTC has a good organization method) AND I can try to find all my textbooks in e-book format (what makes the stylus AWESOME in this regard is that if I would need to write in the book, just take a snapshot of the page I want to write in, write and save it). Plus at 7" it is easily portable (unlike the other tablets on the market by Apple/Motorola/LG which are the size of netbooks, offer less functionality than netbooks and cost like 3-4x more than a netbook). http://www.viddler.com/explore/engadget/videos/2516/ Now I know why their slogan is "Quietly Brilliant"
Touch screens are notorious for maintaining handwriting quality. Judging by the vid, it aint any better...slight lag, large marker appearance...notice that he didn't try to write seriously because he probably can't. Touch screen sensor sensitivity hasn't advanced to the point where it's as accurate as a pen. I'd try it out at a kiosk before making this your note taker.
It does have an active digitizer so it should be better in that aspect than anything else on the market. But you are right, it should be tested before purchased. Hopefully it is priced reasonably unlike other Android tablets (see $800 Xoom/Optimus Pad/Galaxy Tab2).
I'm curious how the stylus and touchscreen combo would work - I notice that he didn't really do any 'notetaking' - at least not that wasn't broad, large strokes - for the most part. Not really handwriting 'size'. You COULD take notes - but the kind of notes that a class requires would take a long time to filter through. And I imagine there isn't much else to make use of the stylus at all - basically just the notetaking app. Other than that, looks good. Wonder what the price will be.
