Honeycomb 3.0 Demoed by Andy Rubin

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Motorola 'Nexus Tab' running Honeycomb

Andy Rubin has just semi-demoed a Motorola Android tablet running Honeycomb at the Dive into Mobile conference. The recording of this Demo was done yesterday (British: 06/12/2010) On exactly the same day as Gingerbread was officially announced. This version of Android includes several new APIs that will make Phone applications run seamlessly on both Tablet and Smartphone, instead of having a separate store for each (I believe this is how the iPad works) The demo also showed an interesting new menu, kept at the bottom of the screen, which completely replaced the need for any buttons on the tablet. Personally, I believe buttons are necessary too any Android device, this is an interesting view on things. The OHA (Open Handset Alliance) On which your device must comply with to be able to access the official Android Market makes Android tablets very awkward. One of the specifications for any Android device is that it must have a cellular connection, which is why Archos has used a third party Market to run it's WiFi only tablets. I would like too think that the OHA Specifications will change to allow WiFi only devices to access the Market, with the release of Honeycomb. Embedded below is a video of Andy Rubin demoing the Motorola device.

[Mark]

Looks like an iPad, i believe the iPad started them market then Android devices are following the footsteps. A tablet would be of no use to me personally.

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I could see it's appliance, I almost wanted one for a while, when I was stuck with my tiny G1 screen. The larger screens are nice for web browsing, book reading, stuff like that. For when you don't/can't carry a laptop around for whatever reason. I'd rather a laptop than a tablet personally.

[Pack3t SynAck3r]

I am very happy that the Google has now released the NDK (native Dev kit) which allows porting of native C and C++ into android app development. This was all part of their big announcement the otherr day. Being restricted to writing all algorithms for development in "java" was a bit smothering. I think this is only going to make the apps written, therefore the android market, and therefore the android as a whole much stronger. On a sad note, no Chrome OS until mid 2011.

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I myself aren't that excited about Chrome OS. It would be nice too boot into my Internet quickly. But, my music is stored on my Hard Drive. I also can't do programming in the cloud. I'm fairly anti-cloud myself. I like client software, Cloud is a backup.

[Pack3t SynAck3r]

Chrome still has the ability to access a hard drive. It is a misnomer that it can not. It is "designed" for cloud integration, but don't think that you can't store data locally. Why would you think that you couldn't program? Don't forget the core kernel of Chrome is Linux. This of course means gcc will be available, as well as any other GNU/Linux based compilers if you so want them. Google has the ability to take Linux to the next level as far as getting the number of people to start using it. I am not necessarily a large fan of the cloud myself, but elite power users that would care about that are few and far between. Most users want their computer to be simplistic, and work "like magic".

[Drumm]

You are correct about the Hard Drive thing so I apologise, but I believe it is limited to SSDs only. I realise the core of Chrome is GNU But the Google video seemed to suggest you wouldn't have more access than a web browser, which is why I have been mislead.
When I first heard about Chrome OS and it's partners I got incredibly excited. Google have been using closed source software on Linux for a long time. When I heard about Google partnering with Adobe to create Chrome OS, the first thing I thought was "Photoshop for Linux! <3" This was long before I realised that unneeded hype is created around tech, especially in the blogs. I then started to think deeper into its effects, one of these were the huge increase of user base in Linux. I will be interested too see how many disappointed users there are when they find out they can't sync their shiny little bricks with Chrome.