MWC 2011 | HTC Flyer details revealed, will include OnLive gaming

HTC has finally taken the wraps off its rumored tablet at this year’s Mobile World Conference. Officially known as the HTC Flyer, the aluminum case 7-inch tablet will sport a blazingly fast 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, a 1024x600 resolution display, a capacitive stylus for easier handwriting, a front and rare camera, 32GB of flash storage and a 4,000mAh battery pack. Surprisingly, the Flyer will be launching with Android 2.4, which is a version ahead of Google’s latest Gingerbread.

An unexpected feature of the tablet will be its ability to use the OnLive gaming service. OnLive is a cloud-based gaming-on-demand internet service that offers a wide range of console third party games for PCs and Macs. It will be interesting to see how such a tablet can hold up to the demands of the service, as the tablet is without dedicated gaming buttons and the service itself requires a bandwidth of at least 3Mbps for PCs and Macs, according to the official OnLive website. However, it may be safe to assume that the Flyer won’t be playing controller-intensive games like Unreal Tournament 3 and will instead be focusing on simpler games that may be built specifically for the tablet. Presumably, the user will be able to use wi-fi to connect to OnLive, although it is possible that HTC may announce cell phone carriers to support the required connection as reported by Electronista.

HTC expects the Flyer to ship worldwide sometime this spring. Unfortunately, OnLive is a U.S. only service, so the function may not be present in models released elsewhere.

Source(s)