HTC Flyer pre-orders open: £599.99 for 7-inch slate

HTC’s 7-inch tablet, the Flyer, has gone up for pre-order at UK retailer Carphone Warehouse (along with their Best Buy Mobile arm). Currently only available off-contract, the HTC Flyer is being offered for £599.99 with no data plan, SIM-lock or agreement; that means buyers will be able to slot in a SIM of their own and not lock themselves into a two-year data plan if they don’t want to.

Specs are just as we’ve seen before, so a 1024 x 600 capacitive touchscreen that works with both finger input and the HTC Scribe active digital stylus, a 5-megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing webcam. The stylus can be used to annotate webpages and create handwritten notes, which can then be sync’d to Evernote.

£599.99 isn’t cheap, but we’d expect to see subsidized deals when the Flyer gets broader availability. We’re still excited about the pen possibilities, though others have expressed concerns that the slate is over-priced considering the rest of the tablet market today. Are you tempted?