Will HTC skip Flyer down under in favour of Puccini?
With the buzz building around the upcoming HTC Puccini tablet, we've got to wondering: where in the world is the HTC Flyer?
The Boy Genius Report blog has dug up an official-looking computer render of the soon-to-be-announced HTC Puccini (stand by for a better name, too), a 10-inch Android Honeycomb tablet headed for the US AT&T network, and presumably for the rest of the world thereafter. The pic doesn't reveal too much about the upcoming tablet, although it is cool to see the capacitive stylus pen tucked away on the right side of the image.
There are indicators suggesting that this will be the case. For starters, the Flyer is now fast becoming yesterday's news, having been released in the UK nearly 3 months ago. Sure, it isn't uncommon for new devices to launch later in Australia, but three months is verging on an eternity in this fast-moving tech world — consider that HTC has just announced that it will launch the Evo 3D in Australia just one month after its US release date. This timing doesn't mean that we won't see the Flyer down under, but every day that passes makes it more unlikely.
We should also consider the lukewarm reception that the Flyer received from the tech community in Europe and the US, a factor that may have had interested Australian telco executives giving the Flyer a second thought. For example, our colleague Flora Graham in the UK gave the Flyer 2.5 stars out of five, citing terrible battery life and the tablet's non-Honeycomb version of Android as major drawbacks to an otherwise sleek gadget.
On the other hand, several months ago, we heard from a well connected source that HTC was "working on bringing the Flyer to Australia". This phrase is ambiguous, but to us, it could mean either that, at the time, HTC was in negotiations with telcos to include the Flyer in their range, or that HTC was assisting a telco partner in testing the tablet before its release.
What's your take on this? Were you considering buying the Flyer, and would you like to see HTC push forward with an Aussie release? After all, trading out the Flyer for the Puccini isn't a like-for-like swap, with the latter's larger form factor a major consideration for some. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
