Google yesterday showed off its new Android Honeycomb tablet OS, which is coming soon to devices like the Motorola Xoom and LG G-Slate. But it's really unclear so far: is Honeycomb coming to phones?
Initially, this seems like a bit of an odd question; Honeycomb's user interface is targeted at big screens. But beyond the usual rantings of early adopters crying that they need the latest version of software whether it works well or not, there's a bigger question involving Android fragmentation and whether developers must now make two versions of all of their apps, for tablets and for phones.
Honeycomb also has some compelling features that would work well on phones, most notably a more powerful graphics engine with lots of 3D built in, a new camera interface, and Google Talk with video chat.
Coming to Phones, Not as Honeycomb?
Here's the lowdown, as far as I could figure it: the features in Honeycomb are coming to phones. But the version of Android which includes those features on phones may not be called "Honeycomb," or may have a different version number than 3.0.
Yesterday, Google's Andrew Kovacs told our Mark Hachman that Honeycomb is exclusively for tablets right now, and "features will arrive on phones over time."
Then Hugo Barra, Google's director of mobile products, told GigaOM's Kevin Tofel that "while Honeycomb is Google's touch and tablet OS, the company will be working to bring it to mobile phones."
There's also the interesting fact Engadget discovered, that if you set the Honeycomb PC emulator to a smartphone screen resolution, it gives you a different user interface (which is totally broken, by the way.)
Some Honeycomb innovations are downloadable. I'd expect the new Google Talk to be an app you can download for Gingerbread phones in the future, and Google showed the new Web-based Android Market working on a Gingerbread-powered Nexus S.
I think the problem here is that people are fixating a little too closely on the name "Honeycomb." This reminds me of the pointless, geeky debate over whether Honeycomb would be assigned version number 2.4 or 3.0.
I still suspect the "Honeycomb" name is reserved for a tablet OS. Google is being very pointedly unclear on this. But Honeycomb's innovations are definitely coming to phones down the line—it's just that Google may decide to declare that a unified phone-and-tablet version has a different version name and number.
As for the difference between tablet and phone apps, I've talked to people within Google as well, and they've said to focus on Honeycomb's concept of "fragments." Fragments let developers design multiple-pane UIs that can also adapt to different screen sizes; one of the goals here is to have a single binary which can display a tablet UI on a tablet, but a phone UI on a phone.
So everyone may be right here. Honeycomb may not be coming to phones—but Honeycomb's features may be coming to phones down the line. Anyone for an Ice Cream Sandwich?