14 DAY TRIAL // During the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January, Google and its partners unveiled a series of tablet PCs that would run under a new flavor of the company's mobile operating system, namely under Android 3.0 Honeycomb, and some more info on the platform was unveiled during an event held by Google on Wednesday.
The arrival of the first such devices should not be far, and Google seems set to speed things up as much as possible. For those who are not yet familiar with Android 3.0 Honeycomb, we should note that the platform iteration was built from the ground up with the larger form factor of tablets in mind.
“Honeycomb has a completely redesigned user interface, with more interactive notifications and widgets, improved multi-tasking, and the latest and greatest Google Mobile services optimized for tablets,” Google notes in a post on the Google Mobile Blog.
Since the currently available versions of the OS were designed for devices with smaller screens, the applications built for them would fit only those screens as well, and Google came up with a preview SDK for the new platform, so that developers can test their software against Android 3.0.
During the aforementioned event, Google demoed pre-release flavors of applications designed to fit the Honeycomb-based devices, coming from a number of over 17 developers.
The list would include: AccuWeather, CNN, Disney Mobile, The Economist, Fuze box, Glu Mobile, Google Body, Grocery iQ, Intuit, Ngmoco, Pulse News, Quickoffice, Time Magazine, TouchType, Trendy Entertainment, War Drum Studios, Weatherbug, Zynga.
Basically, these applications, optimized for running on devices running under the new platform release, would not seem like phone apps forced to run on larger screens, and they would offer a smooth experience on these devices.
But applications are only one aspect of the new mobile OS version. The interface it comes with was improved as well, along with a series of other features inside it, such as the Notification System, a new graphics engine, and a series of new APIs. The video chat capabilities of Honeycomb should impress users as well.
The notifications in Honeycomb will come with more information, available for access faster and easier. They are less intrusive, Google announced, and would be placed at the lower right area of the screen (clicking on it would bring up the notifications window).
One other interesting feature in Android 3.0 Honeycomb would be the Application Bar, which can be set to appear over apps at the top of the screen.
All of these can be seen demonstrated in the video embedded below. More info on the platform should emerge at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, so stay tuned.