UK gets HTC Flyer pre-orders for £600

According to the website Carphone Warehouse, the online store has announced the HTC Flyer for a hefty £599.99 ($980.68) and is now taking pre-orders for the 7-inch tablet. The price is similar to the Amazon HTC Flyer listing reported a couple months back.

For the high asking price, buyers will be getting 32GB of built-in storage and 3G connectivity with the Flyer tablet. A model sans 3G should also be arriving later in the year for what we can assume a lower price point. Regardless, the tablet is still expected to ship without Android 3.0 and will instead run on a version of Android Gingerbread with HTC Sense when released. The rather unattractive price paired with an Android OS not optimized for tablet use could make the Flyer a hard sell for HTC.

Unfortunately for HTC, the current tablet market appears to be aggressively fighting to release tablets in the sub $500 range. The RIM PlayBook, for example, will be selling later this month for $499.99, the same price as a 16GB iPad 2. Samsung has also recently announced its Galaxy Tab for only $350, and even Motorola could be cutting corners off its Xoom tablet in order to knock its price down. With any luck, HTC will follow suit and release multiple Flyer models at more competitive prices.

The HTC Flyer will come with a 1024x600 pixel resolution, a 1.5GHz single-core Snapdragon CPU, 1GB RAM, and a unique Scribe Pen stylus. A WiMAX-enabled variant will be releasing for Sprint this summer in the U.S. 

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