HTC EVO View 4G

The EVO View 4G is a 7" Android tablet with a 1024 x 600 capacitive multi-touch display. It sets itself apart from other tablets because you can use it with HTC's optional $80 Scribe pen to take notes and draw. At release, Sprint was offering the pen for free with the HTC EVO View 4G with contract, but we don't know how long that offer will run.

The HTC EVO View 4G shares the same design as the Flyer we reviewed last month, but in keeping with the EVO family, the color scheme has been changed to charcoal with red accents. We approve.

There are some touches that make the EVO View (and it’s non-Sprint 4G cousin, the HTC Flyer) interesting. For one, the ends of the tablet (left and right when held in landscape orientation) have these little plastic lips on them that give an excellent sense of grip to your thumbs and fingers. It’s almost like HTC took a cue from SLR designers in that regard, and is definitely an improvement (IMO) on the standard “slab” format of most tablets today.

One problem with this device, and I'll explain how to fix it in a moment, is that the scribe pen does not attach to the tablet in any way. If you want to keep it with the device, you'll have to… I don't know… tape it to the back, right? No way.

As far as hardware features are concerned, the EVO View 4G’s most impressive spec is its 4G network compatibility. Assuming you have Sprint’s 4G coverage in your area, the Evo View 4G offers an incredible range of ways to stay connected and pull down content quickly. Other specs, such as a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with 1GB of RAM, Bluetooth 3.0, and 802.11n Wi-Fi, are par for the course these days.

Overall, the HTC Evo View 4G is a solidly built little tablet with a lot of attention paid to details. But in comparison with Apple's highly successful iPad 2, the HTC Evo View 4G is relatively thick and its screen area is approximately half that of the iPad. There's an argument to be made for tablets with the Evo View 4G's smaller, more portable screen size, but for us, the experience often overlaps too much with using a smartphone and still feels constricted for Web browsing.

Besides the moderately expensive price point for a “Did it really have to run on a Gingerbread OS?” device, the HTC EVO View 4G actually does a pretty decent job of being one of the nicer 7-inch tablets out there.