News broke yesterday that Best Buy would be selling a stylus for the HTC Flyer tablet for $80, suggesting that the tablet will actually ship without a digital pen. Today several web sites including Droid-Life and Engadget have received confirmation that the Best Buy version of the HTC Flyer will indeed come without a stylus.

That seems odd since the tablet will have an active digitizer and custom software designed to let you interact with the Google Android operating system with a pen as well as a fingertip.

But it turns out there’s more to the story, because HTC tells Engadget that it’s only the Best Buy model which will be penless. For all intents and purposes, that means you’ll be hard pressed to find the tablet bundled with a pen in the US at launch, since Best Buy is the exclusive US launch partner. But it sounds like you might be able to get the tablet with a digital pen in other areas… and eventually in the US. My guess is you’ll still have to pay extra for the pen, but hopefully you won’t have to pay an extra $80.

Best Buy is expected to begin offering the HTC Flyer tablet later this month for about $500. The tablet features a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 7 inch, 600 x 1024 pixel display, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and 16GB of storage. The HTC Flyer runs GOogle Android 2.3 and has HTC Scribe software for stylus input.

Update: The folks at EuroDroid have confirmed that the tablet does come with a digital pen if you pick it up in the UK. A spare pen is still rather pricey at about $78, but at least you don’t have to buy it separately.

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7 replies on “HTC: The Flyer tablet only lacks a pen if you get it from Best Buy”

  1. fromHTC [email protected] toXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXI asked HTC why there was no stylus in the package this was my response: dateTue, May 10, 2011 at 8:14 PMsubjectRegarding your message (XXXXXXX)mailed-byhtc.comImportant mainly because of the people in the conversation.hide details 8:14 PM (35 minutes ago)

    Dear XXXXX XXXXXXXX,When
    we provide devices to carriers and third party retailers, it is at
    their discretion of what will be provided with the resale of the
    product. This includes any accessories that may be included with it. I
    do apologize for any inconvenience.To send a reply to this message or let me know I have successfully answered your question log in to our ContactUs site using your email address and your ticket number XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.Sincerely,XXXXXXXHTC

  2. If the Flyer+Stylus comes out to being anywhere close to $580 then I’ll be passing on the tablet entirely. Especially since from the videos I’ve seen so far, the stylus can only be used in certain cases. For example, people weren’t able to use it in the browser (clicking links, copy/paste, scrolling, etc.).

    Honestly, I would just prefer them to add mouse pointer functionality to these Android phones and tablets since I don’t plan on doing any note taking or drawing on them. Put back that optical thumb pad that manufacturers seem to be removing nowadays and add a mouse pointer to Android. It would save me time from not needing to constantly zoom in/out to just tap on tightly spaced links (ie. page links: 1, 2, 3, …). Would be useful for activating mouse over elements on many websites. It’ll provide full control of flash content too.

    1. Yes, forget the stylus. Add a mouse pointer to it. I used to think that Android will eventually get this feature since all the early devices had trackballs or optical pads but they seem to be missing in the newer ones.

      1. i also would prefer an optical mouse pointer over a stylus. much more useful.

      2. Ya, Android lost significant functionality by removing the trackpad. A mouse pointer for at least the browser would really make for a more full internet experience. I’d take a mouse cursor over a stylus anyway.

  3. I was thinking of going with the Flyer from BB but now not. Thanks for the followup on the “Pen Issue” it was not clear in the BB info. the pen was included or not.

    1. Same here. I can wait to a version with included pen comes. Then I can see if the 1.5 gHz single core processor is decent enough.

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