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Hands-On: Sprint HTC View 4G Android tablet at CTIA 2011

By: , IntoMobile
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011 at 1:20 PM
htc-view-4g

Sprint announced their version of the HTC Flyer at CTIA 2011 today, called the View 4G. Although Sprint wouldn’t let us touch the preproduction hardware, they gave us a lengthy demo showing the many uses of the pen accessory, and a tour of the hardware.

The HTC View 4G has a 1.5 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, 1.3 megapixel camera on the front for video calling, plus a 5 megapixel camera on the back for big boy pictures, 32 GB of internal storage plus microSD support for an additional 32 GB, Wi-Fi b/g/n with hotspot and DLNA support for media sharing, and connects to both Sprint’s EV-DO 3G and WiMAX 4G networks. It currently runs Android 2.3, but there are plans to upgrade the View 4G to Honeycomb 3.0 in the near future. Its signature feature is a pen that works with the capacitive display, enabling users to sign documents, annotate e-books, and add notes to screenshots.

In my time checking it out, the View 4G ran smoothly, and was a nice size (with an especially slim profile and solid construction, as we would expect from HTC). The thing that leaped out most to me was the notes application, and how useful it would be for students in lectures. Notes are shared up to the cloud through Evernote, so you and your friends friends can access them easily anywhere, plus you can tack on audio up to two hours in length – perfect for future reference in those lengthy classes. I hope that HTC is opening up the pen accessory with an SDK so third-party app developers can explore new use cases, however nichey they may be.

The HTC View 4G is coming to Sprint this summer (price undisclosed), but in the meantime here are some stills, with 1080p HD video to come shortly.

About The Author

Simon Sage

Simon Sage’s education largely surrounded writing, technology and online community, leading him to begin his blogging career at www.BlackBerryCool.com and to quickly discover a vibrant and active community surrounding BlackBerry and mobile technology. In exploring RIM’s platform, he has learned what enterprises are looking for in mobility as well as what makes the innocuous BlackBerry so appealing to them. Recently Simon’s been covering RIM’s gradual move into an already-crowded consumer market, and the impact of burgeoning challengers, such as the iPhone, as well as long-time leaders, like Nokia, on BlackBerry’s advancement. With plenty of content under his belt, Simon will be branching off a bit to see what other smartphone manufacturers are working on while still using BlackBerry as a barometer. At IntoMobile, you can count on his posts being even-handed, well-informed and thought-out.

  • http://twitter.com/josephggubbels Joseph Gubbels

    This whole Ever Note thing would be AMAZING for taking notes in lectures, you could record the whole thing (assuming no cap on recording time) and then write notes while recording, like draw diagrams or just write down your thoughts or notes on whatever is being said.
    Wow, the more I think about it, the better this seems!

  • http://twitter.com/mistercarter7 Mike Gonzalez

    so they put a worse processor in a tablet with 1 core than in a phone with 2 cores #FAIL