LG tablet to be flavoured with 'Honeycomb' Android
Asus skipping 'Gingerbread' too?
LG's decision to delay its Android tablet in order to bypass Android 2.2 'Froyo' - said by the company to be unsuitable for tablets - may see it skip a further release and adopt 'Honeycomb' instead of 'Gingerbread'.
So claims a company mole cited by Reuters. Google, of course, hasn't publicly announced Honeycomb.
Gingerbread is expected to debut as Android 3.0 and will add a raft of tablet-friendly features absent from Froyo. Samsung chose to stick with 2.2 for its Galaxy Tab tablet, but other vendors have chosen to wait, presumably for Gingerbread.
LG formally announced last month that it was putting back the release of its tablet. At the time, it was assumed that it would go with Gingerbread.
Reuters' source suggests the Honeycomb-based tablet will be out early in 2011. Separately, Asus has said its Android-based Eee Pad tablet won't now be out until April - a sign, we wonder, that it too is skipping the initial Gingerbread release for Honeycomb, which could be released as Android 3.1 or 3.2.
With Gingerbread not expected to be released until December, Honeycomb sureley won't debut for a month or two after that. Unless, of course, Google is planning to fork Android into parallel smartphone- and tablet-centric releases, if only in the short term. ®
COMMENTS
junk?
no GPS is a deal breaker for me - I want to navigate with a tablet so the sooner a proper compliance document is out the better.
So, why not just release with 2.2 now..
..and upgrade to 3 or 3.something later? I mean, wasn't that supposed to be the whole point?
Oh yeah, why do that when you can tell your users to buy a whole new device in six months? Good one, Samsung. As sneaky as a ninja that's just pulled his pants down in the middle of Manchester shouting "I'M A FUCKING NINJA!"
Google really needs to pull its finger out now
Every week sees tablet announcements based on android and the OS isn't ready for it and nor is the compatibility document. Consequently half the tablets aren't compliant and can't ship Android marketplace and the other half are laden down with expensive, superfluous junk like GPS, compass, camera etc. in order to stay compliant.
Worse is Google seems to be a doing a Microsoft where the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. Thus we have Android AND Chrome OS competing for virtually the same space - tablets, netbooks, PMPs. At least Microsoft had the nerve to kill Kin to give Windows Phone a fighting chance. Are Google going to do the same, or bump along promoting two mutually incompatible, overlapping solutions confusing the hell out of everyone in the process?
Google, pull your finger out.
Android versions...
Has it been confirmed that Gingerbread is definitely Android 3.0? Just wondering as maybe it could turn out to be 2.3 and Honeycomb is v3.0 instead?
