Google is still teasing Honeycomb and this time its to the developers with a preview of the Android 3.0 platform. Android 3.0 was for the first time teased at CES 2011, and a few announcements have been made already. The most hyped up for sure is the Motorola Xoom tablet that has kicked off with a gigantic mouth pre-CES teaser video. But as Apple points out, there are no details on pricing and specs given yet! No, I don’t want to quote Tim Cook here, but I am still referring to our report that the world won’t see Honeycomb tablets before Q2 2011! We expect Motorola to be an exception to this (with Google’s blessings), but if people are waiting for a Xoom launch in February, shouldn’t developers already be working on apps? Either ways, here is what the SDK preview has:
The Android 3.0 preview refers to several New User features and Developer Features. While you can glance through the entire list here, there are several changes / new additions like UI evolution, keyboard, and text selection (copy/paste), widgets, browser, email app and more. Old apps would be compatible:
Android 3.0 brings a new UI designed for tablets and other larger screen devices, but it also is fully compatible with applications developed for earlier versions of the platform, or for smaller screen sizes. Existing applications can seamlessly participate in the new holographic UI theme without code changes, by adding a single attribute in their manifest files.
Widgets on Honeycomb
We have seen Andy Rubin demo 3D maps before and Honeycomb packs in hardware accelerated 2D graphics aswell. We would certainly make better sense of all this with some developers delivering on it! For now the confirmation of the fact that Android 3.0 isn’t limited to dual-core processors, leaves us with the hope and manufacturers with the hope of getting an update to existing Froyo tablets.
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