Honeycomb is geared for Android tablets, which thus far haven't yet attained the popularity of Apple's iPad. Upgrading from 3.0 to 3.1 should offers user interface refinements, a new movie rental service, and the ability to plug in USB devices such as keyboards and game controllers.
The Motorola Xoom tablet on Verizon's 3G service--the inaugural Honeycomb device with Android 3.0--will get the 3.1 update today, Google said at its Google I/O conference here today. It's coming to Google TV devices from Sony, Vizio, Samsung, and Logitech, too.
But in the fourth quarter, Google's Honeycomb feature will come to phones with a new version of Android called Ice Cream Sandwich.
Front and center in the new version is work shielding programmers from fragmentation issues--hardware differences such as different screen sizes that mean a program won't run the same on
different devices.
It will include all of Honeycomb's user interface features, too, and includes the "holographic" user interface, application launcher, multitasking, and richer widgets.
Android 3.1's interface includes features such as a new scrolling list of apps for switching among them and resizable widgets. Existing widgets can be updated with new XML code to give them the new resizing abilities.
No comments:
Post a Comment