By Tim Conneally, Betanews At a special event in Mountain View, California Wednesday, search leader Google gave the first in-depth look at "Honeycomb," the tablet-specific version of the Android operating system. This is the biggest overhaul the platform has gotten since it debuted in 2008. The arrival of Honeycomb is important because it means the Android-based tablets that were announced at the International Consumer Electronics Show in January can finally be shown off in full working order. Motorola Mobility's Xoom tablet, for example, was expected to make a big splash at CES 2011, but there was little for the company to show, since Honeycomb wasn't ready. Xoom was presented running a non-interactive demo instead. LG's T-Mobile G-Slate, likewise, has been anticipated for several months, but was only officially unveiled on Tuesday.Shipments of Android smartphones have snowballed in the last year, and research firm Canalys this week said it has begun to outship leading mobile platform Symbian globally. With the still-developing tablet device market, however, the only major entry running Android is the Samsung Galaxy Tab. In the three months that it has been available, Samsung says it has shipped two million Galaxy Tabs, an impressive figure for a single device, no doubt, but there is little to differentiate the experience on the Galaxy Tab from Samsung's Galaxy S smartphone line.Fortunately, Honeycomb is vastly different from all previous versions of Android, and the... Continue reading at 'Betanews'
[ Betanews | 2011-02-03 00:00:00 UTC ]