Seems like all the news around the tech world is about Google these days…more so about Android. That’s because they are going to release their next iteration of Android- codenamed Honeycomb (v 3.0 I think).
The headline going around is that Honeycomb is developed with the tablet form factor in mind. Obviously that means they have been pushed by people’s sudden spurt of interest in buying these as well as nudges from the hardware manufacturers to develop a tablet-optimized OS.
In Google’s own words this is definitely the next generation of Android is completely different. First of the striking feature is that the UI looks very muted and out of your way. The lock screen is a little circle in which you need to slide your finger from left to right. The home screen appears immediately and seems to have an odd 3-D kind of look to it. At the bottom of the screen reside 3 large control icons, which would eliminate the need for external buttons. These include the back,home and select button (in that order). The main screen estate is occupied by a set of shortcuts to applications as well as some new and improved Google widgets. The widgets are more powerful due to two main reasons- (1) more space and hence could display more useful information (2) more processing power so they seem to be snappy. Case in point is the GMail widget which displays unread messages from your GMail inbox. You can also scroll through this list. Another neat widget is the browser bookmarks which is again scrollable. So is the calendar widget which display your upcoming appointments from Google Calendar as well.
Honeycomb also supports multiple homescreens which are side-scrollable. Each of the homescreens can support multiple apps (just like any other Android presently in the market). Again there is a top-view of all the homescreens which you can access by a touch gesture or by hitting the home icon.Widgets can be moved between screens as well.To add widgets you need to tap on the little “plus” icon at the right top. And of course there is the Google Search toolbar at the top of every homescreen as well as the Voice Search/Control icon near it.
Couple of key updates from Google’s side in Honeycomb is the new GMail app and the new Chrome-like browser. The GMail application has been redesigned to use the entire screen space. Tap on the GMail icon and you are displayed with your inbox. The mail headers on the left and the content on the right. The browser as mentioned earlier is Google Chrome’s little brother. It has the familiar looking interface,supports flash,has multiple tab support and also has the option of syncing bookmarks from your desktop Chrome browser.
Another redesign would be in the Youtube application. This application has an awesome concave looking arrangement of videos, again looking a bit 3-D. All this 3-D influence maybe comes from the team at bumptop which Google acquired recently (www.bumptop.com). Google maps also has been optimized for tablets with cooler rendering of the map, like the building popping out (3-D again) in the map. The map’s perspective and zoom level can be altered using multi-touch gestures.
This version of Android also support native multi-tasking. From the home screen clicking on the task switcher icon displays a list of recently used(i.e running) apps. You can simply switch to any of those apps and resume from where you left off. Background processes like a download or maybe twitter apps would still be running in the background whereas other user-interaction required apps like games would be frozen at the time of switching. A more personal note here : With Google releasing new SDKs for gaming and direct hardware manipulation I feel Android tablet gaming would go very far, especially to casual gamers. This is mainly because of the large multi-touch enabled capacitive screen, ideal for RPGs.It also has an e-book application which syncs with the Google Books site and hence providing a good e-reading experience as well.
Android 3.0 has been optimized for tablets but that does not mean it wont come to smart phones. Couple of smart phone related apps are the customized Google talk application which is the IM client with built in video chat. There is also a notification pane. not very unlike that found in Android phones these days.
The OS has been upgraded so that it can playback 1080p videos as well. However the hardware would probably decide on that.
As of now the OS has been introduced with Motorola’s Xoom tablet with other manufacturers queueing up to release their own honeycomb tablet. The demo of the OS using Moto Xoom seemed very impressive with the OS being really attractive and snappy. One cant really say if that’s because of the OS optimizations or because of the cool specs of the Xoom.
[Moto Xoom]
The feature specs released by Motorola is quite mouth watering too.The tablet boasts a 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor, 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, a 10.1 inch capacitive touch screen which supports a 1280 x 800 resolution , a 5.0 MP rear-facing camera with 4x Digital Zoom and Auto Focus, 720p video recording and 1080p video playback, 32 GB of storage, 802.11 n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. If you’re into sizes, you should know that Motorola Xoom is a 249.1 mm x 167.8 mm x 12.9 mm tablet, weighing 730 g. Xoom will be able to last for up to 10 hours of video playback! That’s an impressive battery life.
Check out the video below to see the demo of Honeycomb tablet made at CES earlier this week.
arvindkrishnaa 