Google Android 2.3 Gingerbread? That’s so yesterday morning. Last evening Google’s Any Rubin pulled a prototype Motorola Tablet out of his bag, and it was running an early build of Android 3.0 Honeycomb. He says the new operating system will be available “next year” and it’s designed to work with both phones and tablets.
That means it supports higher resolution displays — and not just by letting apps scale to full screen. Some apps, like Gmail, will now support a two-pane approach where you can see a list of messages on the left and the body of a message on the right. You know, like Apple’s Mail app for iPad.
TechCrunch also notes that the tablet appears to have a new lock screen, which you can unlock simply by dragging the lock icon in any direction. Plus, there’s also a new desktop layout. It still supports icons for apps and widgets, but the tablet doesn’t have any physical buttons. This mean that if you’re holding a tablet in portrait or landscape mode, or even upside down, you don’t have to reach around the tablet at an awkward angle to reach the buttons.
Rubin says the way Android 3.0 will work on both smartphones and tablets is that developers can write apps that have multiple views. On a tablet, both of those views may show up at the same time, stacked side-by-side (like the Gmail app), while on a smartphone, you may only see one screen at a time (like the current Gmail app).
when i hear reports of “next year” for any technology instead of knowing the quarter or the month release, etc, i like to equate “next year” as “some day”, cuz next year could mean “dec 31, 2011.” just saying…
also, i would hope for it to be “next year” considering there is only a few weeks left of this year. in all honesty, as a tech consumer of many things, i would almost prefer not to even know something is coming “next year”, because of my previous statement above, and rather them report a bit more detail when they have a bit more of a concrete timeline. i was under the impression their true tablet OS was next year when the ipad came out this year and so far i’m still hearing next year like its something different. this kind of announcements is so broad that any consumer purchase made in this category would be a waste knowing the the true and real version of the software will be out next year. i feel sorry for anyone who bought one of those fly by night android pads (http://www.mertado.com/index.php?spact=product&product_id=3652) i saw advertised on the home shopping network the other night. i’d rather under-promise and over-deliver… just say Q4 and then surprise everyone when it comes out early instead of just keeping us hanging…