Hands0n
3rd February 2011, 01:20 PM
Unless you have been living under a rock for the past six or so months you would not have been able to escape news of the early challenges to the Apple iPad being made by a small number of manufacturers. Most notably, perhaps, are the likes of Samsung with their Galaxy Tab and Dell with their 5" and now 7" Streak. These three, however, are more realistically oversized Android mobile smartphones and as such are reasonably well supported by Google's OS, and in particular Market.
Then there have more recently been a number of Chinese-made Android tablet computers that sport Android 2.1 (Eclair) and one or two that have Android 2.2 (Froyo) as of late. But as these are not smartphones Google does not support them and there is not an official Market for apps. There are, of course, workarounds. You may have seen the likes of Advent and even some high street chains like Next sporting these rather cheap Android tablets.
Apart from the oversized smartphones the general experience of the user of these Android tablets has been disappointing. Most particularly for the ordinary user. The rest of the buyers who inhabit the likes of XDA forum and its ilk are less troubled as they will have replaced the OS within minutes of unpacking. But that is not at all mainstream.
And so the general experience of Android in tablet form has been disappointing to many. The shops that so eagerly bought in bulk from Samsung have been lumbered with unsold stock. This has had the effect of trimming more than £200 off the price of the Galaxy Tab, for example. One could expect further discounting.
Enter Honeycomb
At this point it is probably worth pointing you at the Honeycomb presentation put on by Google on 02-02-2011. There is a 53 minute full video (in HD) available to watch on YouTube here --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfJuigJebRg&hd=1
115111521153
Having watched the video in full, and then ran parts of it through again I am firmly of the opinion that the availability of Honeycomb on Android Tablets will be the making of these devices, finally. I also believe that Android, for the first time, is on the cusp of being a very serious threat to Apple's iPad that has had all of the running so far.
So the question on my mind is whether or not Android can repeat, with tablet devices, what it is seemingly achieving with smartphones. That is, world dominance!
Worrying things
Android Honeycomb is indeed delightful to look at. The designers have put together a rather excellent looking UI that is very functional and adapts well to the tablet paradigm. I have yet to see Honeycomb on the smartphone, but that is another story to be told later. Certainly, how and what they have integrated into the tablet UI is not only exciting to look at but appears to be highly functional also. Android, for the first time, beginning to look as though it meets head on the functionality and capability of iOS, allowing the tablet to act as an appliance [when needed] rather than a full on computer.
But does all of this whizzy functionality come at a price in hardware? That is, will Honeycomb require masses of RAM and dual core processors with very powerful GPUs to function? Will that OS, in a stroke, render all previous hardware obsolete - both tablet and smartphone? Google is not saying, and there is yet to be any demonstration of backwards compatibility - the presentation has been made on the Motorola Xoom, a yet to be released device.
Backwards Compatibility?
Google appear to have learned from others' mistakes. The presentation demonstrated Fruit Ninja for Android 2.x running in Honeycomb unaltered, with the same speed and graphic excellence as if it were running on a regular Android smartphone. The graphic scaling looked perfect. And Google claim this is the norm for all Android apps - without alteration they will run on Honeycomb tablets.
This looked great on the YouTube video - there were no apparent artefacts, multi-finger gestures all worked. It was all good. There was no feeble need to run the pre-Honeycomb app in a smaller window, or inferior upscaling to ruin the visual experience. Well done Google. Apple will need to up its game in iOS.
Behind the gloss
Visually appealing as Honeycomb is, there is a wealth of enhanced capability built in to the new OS. Android developers are going to love the new OS version. All of the functionality demonstrated, and more, is made available through the APIs. For example, hardware graphics acceleration is available to the developer to enable by way of a single Android code instruction.
There will be a lot to learn for the developers. This is a major update, not an incremental release. There will be mistakes, but the potential in the new 3.0 OS is enormous. We should anticipate a couple of years of life in this release, with point releases along the way to add in improvements and enhancements.
Conclusions?
I believe that we will not be disappointed by the new Android 3.0 Honeycomb. The new OS, although primarily intended to bring Android to the tablet format, is going to be a game changer for the industry. Apple with its iOS cannot ignore the challenge being thrown at it by Google. Microsoft really needs to think again in relation to Windows 7 on tablets and WP7 on smartphones with no real synergy between the pair. And the rest will just have to sit it out and watch their market-share dwindle, they are all making traditional mistakes and do not seem to get it at all.
The year 2011 will not only be the year of the tablet - it will be the year of the Android tablet. And it will be a technologically better year for it too.
Then there have more recently been a number of Chinese-made Android tablet computers that sport Android 2.1 (Eclair) and one or two that have Android 2.2 (Froyo) as of late. But as these are not smartphones Google does not support them and there is not an official Market for apps. There are, of course, workarounds. You may have seen the likes of Advent and even some high street chains like Next sporting these rather cheap Android tablets.
Apart from the oversized smartphones the general experience of the user of these Android tablets has been disappointing. Most particularly for the ordinary user. The rest of the buyers who inhabit the likes of XDA forum and its ilk are less troubled as they will have replaced the OS within minutes of unpacking. But that is not at all mainstream.
And so the general experience of Android in tablet form has been disappointing to many. The shops that so eagerly bought in bulk from Samsung have been lumbered with unsold stock. This has had the effect of trimming more than £200 off the price of the Galaxy Tab, for example. One could expect further discounting.
Enter Honeycomb
At this point it is probably worth pointing you at the Honeycomb presentation put on by Google on 02-02-2011. There is a 53 minute full video (in HD) available to watch on YouTube here --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfJuigJebRg&hd=1
115111521153
Having watched the video in full, and then ran parts of it through again I am firmly of the opinion that the availability of Honeycomb on Android Tablets will be the making of these devices, finally. I also believe that Android, for the first time, is on the cusp of being a very serious threat to Apple's iPad that has had all of the running so far.
So the question on my mind is whether or not Android can repeat, with tablet devices, what it is seemingly achieving with smartphones. That is, world dominance!
Worrying things
Android Honeycomb is indeed delightful to look at. The designers have put together a rather excellent looking UI that is very functional and adapts well to the tablet paradigm. I have yet to see Honeycomb on the smartphone, but that is another story to be told later. Certainly, how and what they have integrated into the tablet UI is not only exciting to look at but appears to be highly functional also. Android, for the first time, beginning to look as though it meets head on the functionality and capability of iOS, allowing the tablet to act as an appliance [when needed] rather than a full on computer.
But does all of this whizzy functionality come at a price in hardware? That is, will Honeycomb require masses of RAM and dual core processors with very powerful GPUs to function? Will that OS, in a stroke, render all previous hardware obsolete - both tablet and smartphone? Google is not saying, and there is yet to be any demonstration of backwards compatibility - the presentation has been made on the Motorola Xoom, a yet to be released device.
Backwards Compatibility?
Google appear to have learned from others' mistakes. The presentation demonstrated Fruit Ninja for Android 2.x running in Honeycomb unaltered, with the same speed and graphic excellence as if it were running on a regular Android smartphone. The graphic scaling looked perfect. And Google claim this is the norm for all Android apps - without alteration they will run on Honeycomb tablets.
This looked great on the YouTube video - there were no apparent artefacts, multi-finger gestures all worked. It was all good. There was no feeble need to run the pre-Honeycomb app in a smaller window, or inferior upscaling to ruin the visual experience. Well done Google. Apple will need to up its game in iOS.
Behind the gloss
Visually appealing as Honeycomb is, there is a wealth of enhanced capability built in to the new OS. Android developers are going to love the new OS version. All of the functionality demonstrated, and more, is made available through the APIs. For example, hardware graphics acceleration is available to the developer to enable by way of a single Android code instruction.
There will be a lot to learn for the developers. This is a major update, not an incremental release. There will be mistakes, but the potential in the new 3.0 OS is enormous. We should anticipate a couple of years of life in this release, with point releases along the way to add in improvements and enhancements.
Conclusions?
I believe that we will not be disappointed by the new Android 3.0 Honeycomb. The new OS, although primarily intended to bring Android to the tablet format, is going to be a game changer for the industry. Apple with its iOS cannot ignore the challenge being thrown at it by Google. Microsoft really needs to think again in relation to Windows 7 on tablets and WP7 on smartphones with no real synergy between the pair. And the rest will just have to sit it out and watch their market-share dwindle, they are all making traditional mistakes and do not seem to get it at all.
The year 2011 will not only be the year of the tablet - it will be the year of the Android tablet. And it will be a technologically better year for it too.