HTC Flyer VS the iPad… You Decide

Let’s pretend for a minute that I’m an uber techy mom.
You know, lots of gadgets, fun tech things in my mom-van, a purse full of electronics…

This is NOT me, but she seems like a techy mom right?

Oh wait. That IS me.

I had a Blackberry ‘Pearl’ a few years ago. Loved it. Used it pretty much till I destroyed it. It was pink. How fun is that? But about two years ago I began hearing everyone talk about all the fun things they were doing with their phones?

My um.. BB? Yeah it couldn’t do those things. AT. ALL.

Other Techy Schtuff In Our Lives:

• We got an early edition iTouch about 3 years ago (hate it btw, unbelievably hard to use, where are the settings, options, and BUTTONS for pete’s sake?). My oldest daughter uses it pretty much only as a Pandora ‘music box’ now.
• Last year I bought a Kindle for my husband. Turns out I wish I had waited. The early Kindle kind of sucks. The Nook seems much better and I’m guessing most of the tablets on the market now have comparable e-readers built in. Why would you buy a device that is ONLY an e-reader? (M’bad.)
• We currently own several iPods including an early clunky white one (the battery never lasted more than 1 hour) all the way down to a sleek, tiny ‘Shuffle’. (Why is THAT kind of tiny, coveted? Can you please tell me?)
• We gave in and bought a Wii, AFTER the grandparents had one mind you.
• And to this day I do not understand iTunes. We have 3 separate ‘accounts’, and I swear, every time I attempt to sync an MP3 player it deletes every friggin’ thing on the device! EVERY THING. Please shoot me now.
• I own a really nice speaker dock that has slots for iPods etc. and we rarely use it for anything but our cell phones (Android based) to play saved music, audio books and yes.. Pandora.

So back to the Blackberry. I needed/wanted/coveted a new phone. And maybe you guessed from the above list.. I AM NOT AN APPLE. We own several PCs, and have owned multiple PCs over the years. What I’m saying is I was NEVER interested in an iPhone.

I purchased an Android based HTC Incredible (via my Verizon 2yearcontract deal), at the time I was all: what’s Android?? And a year later I upgraded to an HTC Thunderbolt (insert thunder sound effects). That upgrade was thanks to HTC, because they sent it to me as part of the BlogHer experience.

I use this phone like a mini laptop. It’s everything in one… and it’s great. And it’s pretty. (And yes I play Angry Birds on it.)

But of course I want more. When at blogging and social media conferences the main goal is to tweet as much as you can. (I think they give out prizes for the person with the most tweets.) And my phone rocks, but it’s hard to type fast on a phone. I have fun apps that speed things up, but still. And believe me, dragging a large laptop to a conference like that is NOT a possibility.

So I began hinting to my husband that I would really like to have a tablet of some sort to use while traveling. (Okay I’d play Angry birds on it too.) And surprise! He bought me an iPad for ‘our’ anniversary. Don’t get me wrong I was very excited to test it out, but see the bullet points above? I don’t have a very good track record with Apple. We aren’t friends. (Do we think maybe HE wanted the iPad?)

I tried hard. I did. BUT…

For one… I don’t dare let the kids play with it much, HELLO, it cost more than my honeymoon!! For another, that business where it DELETES everything with iTunes? Yeah. Hate that. Oh and typing on it isn’t great, I’m still using the one finger method, and you know what your option is? Spend ANOTHER $100 for… get this… a KEYBOARD! Srsly? People? For $700 do you know what kind of amazing laptop I could buy? One that comes WITH a keyboard, that’s for dang sure!

Okay enough about my NOT-fondness for Apple. (Whoops I lied. Right now the iPad won’t ‘connect’ to our home wifi network. Why? I don’t know, there are only two ‘options’ and I tested both. Still won’t connect. And in hotels? Yeah about 50% of the time it won’t connect there either. I’m done now.)

I got to test out an HTC Flyer this week!

We’ve been playing with it all weekend.
And by we.. I mean my kids won’t let me see the thing!

(My 11yearold just marched off with it so she could use the ‘calculator’ to do her homework.. oh yeah sure… I believe that…NOT.)

• Cool thing #1: I was able to get all my previous Amazon Downloaded apps onto the Flyer easy peasy! Yay me!
• Cool thing #2: Who knew a game called “Moron Test” would entertain my 7 and 11 year old for hours? (Nearly made us late for school this morning).
• Cool thing #3: I love the size. I was worried the 7inch screen would be too small. But turns out the reader on it is FABulous. Perfect size for holding. In fact, I’m pretty sure I prefer the 7inch to a larger screen. (That was a surprise?)
• Cool thing #4: This should actually be cool thing number one…  the whole experience is so close to my HTC thunderbolt that set up and start up were non-existent. Where is the home button? Right where it SHOULD be. Where are the settings.. same place as my phone and in the same manner.  My kids already know how to run my phone making it super easy for them to use this device as well.
  I could be in a world of hurt because my 14 year old thinks SHE needs one of these MORE than I do.. WHAT?? I mean. BACK off. Mom first. Right?
• Cool thing #5: Connecting to the Wifi. It just works. AMEN.

Shall we talk about price?

You get what you pay for and all that?

How about $299? SHAZAAM! Over on BestBuy.com it sells for this price. There are extras, like the HTC Scribe pen (fun!) for about $50 and yes real keyboards and stands etc.. for additional costs as well. But still keeping you so far under ‘other’ tablets it’s still worth it.

The bottom line for me. The Flyer is So Dang Much easier to use than an iPad. If you already have an Android based phone everything will make SENSE. Oh and when you connect to your PC to download fave music, are you ready? It does NOT delete everything!

Joyful AND Triumphant.

(PS. Yes I’d like to test out a Kindle Fire, but I keep wondering? Even tho it’s less expensive do you get what you pay for? Are you limited to only Amazon content? Because that’s one of my main problems with Apple products, you buy the product and then you are roped into ONLY using their content. I hate that. And just how much of the Android market works on it?)

Disclosure: I did NOT pay for the HTC Flyer, it is on loan. Also I was not compensated for this article. I did receive the HTC Thunderbolt free while at BlogHer, but that in no way swayed my opinion. I already loved HTC. So there.