Well, the video’s been made private on YouTube, but that didn’t stop Engadget from snapping it up for our viewing pleasure. On the androiddevelopers YouTube channel, Google (accidentally?) posted a full-fledged, all-out, crazy-insane video showing off it’s next version of Android–Honeycomb. Not only will Honeycomb be version 3.0, but it will also be exclusively for tablets. This likely means that Android development has been branched off into two projects–phone and tablet. This doesn’t necessarily mean that there won’t be a “Honeycomb” for phones. It just means that it won’t look anything like the tablet version (2.4 anybody?).

In the video below, you’ll see an entirely new UI, coated in an eerily cool black theme, and sporting a completely new way of navigating and using homescreens. It’s spot on with what Andy Rubin showed off a few weeks ago and even includes built-in Google Talk video chat. After seeing the video, it becomes very clear why tablet makers are so excited about the latest iteration of Android. Instead of evolutionary, Google is pushing for something revolutionary.

Check out the video below. Oh, and just in case it gets pulled, you can always head over to Engadget to see it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-80QD5Zjyc[/youtube]

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3 COMMENTS

  1. Hmm…wonder just how different this branch is? Will it maintain app compatibility, or is it basically a new OS? Once your fork it, I wouldn’t expect interoperability to be maintained.

    • I am assuming both the phone and tablet version of the OS will run the same core but just have different UIs. That would prevent compatibility issues and fragmentation. It’s also possible that there will still be just one version of Android, but depending on the device it’s running on, it will present itself with a different UI. That would be insane!

      Either way… I now feel the need to buy a tablet.

      • I think that will be the case, as Rubin said at Dive Into Mobile, they added APIs in honeycomb to allow an app to “express itself in different ways”. So i imagine that apps built to take advantage of them will display themselves differently on tablets whereas apps that aren’t will run like they do on current tablets like the Galaxy Tab

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