Usually it’s Apple doing the event thing, but today the thunder’s on Google. It held a press event to officially unveil Android 3.0 Honeycomb for tablets, as well as a revamped Android market. Gizmodo has a hands-on of the Motorola Xoom running Android 3.0, as does Engadget. Also today, the Android Market has been updated with a web frontend which allows for the seamless purchase and installation of Android applications from within your browser, which are then pushed to your device(s). In-application purchases have been added as well.
I like the interface and it is neatly done. But I don’t know when I would this kind of tablet PCs for real life use.
All that glitters might indeed be gold but as I see it at the moment, the only decent Android fondle slabs capable of going head to head with the iPad mk1 are (here in the UK) actually more expensive than said iPad. This does take into consideration the total contract cost in data. Yes I’m looking at the 3G ones here. The WiFi only ones are pretty well useless outside the home unless you have some form of 3G device to connect to the interwebs.
Were we all not seduced by the promise of iPad beaters at a cost much less than what Apple was gouging from us?
Well, where the hell are they people? I see no Ships(aka iPad beaters that are far kinder on the pocket)?
All I can hope for is that with the release of Honeycomb that many more alternatives to the iPad with a similar size come onto the market in the next few months.
But nturally they will be playing catch-up to the iPad2. But hey, it does make for some nice speculation don’t it?
Notion Ink’s Admin looks pretty good. It’s made by a small company, but personally, I think they have done a fantastic job. I also think that their tablet interface is much better than what google has done with 3.0
Why is that exactly? I don’t really understand why you need a cell phone thats always connected to the internet AND a bigger version of a cell phone also connected to the internet. If its different and you are able to actual office like work on it, then you can use it off line ( like most notebooks/netbooks). If its not, then why do you need it other than for the bigger screen?
I don’t mean to dismiss your use case, I’m just curious to hear it fleshed out a bit more.
Nice moves, Google, Honeycomb(2.4) looks good, but as yet there is no Gingerbread(2.3) for the Nexus One (as was promised in “weeks” two months ago) or the vast majority of Android phones. Actually there is no FroYo for the vast majority of Android phones either. Most Android phones are now 3 versions back (2.1) from the current “latest firmware”.
Contrast this with the iPhone: The original iPHone released almost 4 years ago and that was discontinued a year later, is the ONLY model that cannot and does not run the latest firmware from Apple.
What a sad situation of fragmentation from Android, it’s just totally ridiculous.
Way to confuse issues… Google is not responsible for carriers hold out on upgrade version.
Honeycomb is the tablet version. They always said it was for tablet. so again nothing to do with phones.
Finally, end-users don’t give a damn about fragmentation. I have only one phone.
Consumers may not care about fragmentation, but they do care about it’s effects on them.
There are a number of decent Android phones, but I have absolutely no idea how long they will be supported. If I could find a phone in my budget where the company promised to update it for just 18 months, I would purchase right now.
nexus costs same as iphone…
apple does not have cheap models… at least Android offer choice in all range of price.
Uh, Google has already announced IceCream, the phone variant of Honeycomb. I would bet anything that it won’t be available for any current Android phone, though, regardless of whether any current phone is capable of running it or not.