HTC EVO View 4G Video Hands-On: Will This Pen Tablet Fly?

Sick of lookalike Honeycomb tablets? Take a good look at the HTC EVO View, a 7-inch Android 2.2 slate with a very unique twist. Known as the HTC Flyer overseas, the EVO View works with a digital pen (sold separately) so you can take notes right on the display, which automatically get synced with Evernote. HTC’s Scribe technology also lets you mark up and then share everything from web pages and eBooks to pictures, and a Timemark feature allows users to record audio while they scribble.

Of course, the EVO View 4G will tap into Sprint’s 4G network, and you get a zippy 1.5-GHz processor, dual cameras (5-MP on back, 1.3-MP up front), and 32GB of memory. The EVO View 4G won’t be launching until summer, and that’s a good thing because the software is definitely a work in progress.

Check out our impressions, photo, and quick video preview below.During our brief hands-on time, the EVO View 4G had some trouble registering pen input, forcing us to be very deliberate. Operating the View 4G in landscape mode was also buggy. Worse, there’s nowhere to put the pen; adding a holster would have bulked up the design, which is already heavier than the original Galaxy Tab by more than an once (13.4 vs. 14.9 ounces). Nevertheless, forgetful users–like me–are guaranteed to lose the pen. Some buyers will be turned off by the lack of Honeycomb goodness here, though an upgrade will be coming to Android 3.0.

What we do like about the EVO View 4G is it’s solid build quality, complete with metal back and soft touch accents, and its enhanced Sense software. This includes nifty carousel-like animations when you’re flipping through home screens. We like the idea of pen input on an Android tablet, but HTC and Sprint are going to have to really execute to make the pen experience as smooth as the touch one.