Hasta La Gadget!

One of the first things that happens after a new platform emulator breaks loose is that a bunch of hackers far smarter than ourselves get hold of it, tear it apart, and port it to whatever’s convenient. In the case of this week’s Android 3.0 Honeycomb preview, “whatever’s convenient” would be the Nook Color, which reigns as perhaps the cheapest decent-quality Android tablet money can currently buy. Naturally, xda-developers has a thread going on the subject as we speak; the current port is said to be really slow and mostly broken — but then again, that kind of describes the current state of the emulator itself. Good news is that the developer says he plans on working on graphics acceleration to improve performance over the weekend, so with any luck, the Xoom might have some unofficial competition before too long. Follow the break for another shot.

[Thanks, s30zgt]

Continue reading Nook Color earns its very early, very unofficial Android 3.0 Honeycomb wings

Nook Color earns its very early, very unofficial Android 3.0 Honeycomb wings originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Jan 2011 17:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So we’ve just installed Google’s first public-access preview of its tablet-focused Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system, an early build of the platform’s SDK that features “non-final” code and APIs; it’s intended primarily for developers who want to get a head start on making their tablet app dreams come true, but naturally, we needed to install it and take it for a test drive ourselves. Here are our quick observations:

• Like Android SDK emulators before it, Honeycomb’s is extremely slow — nearly to the point of uselessness in this case. We’ll give them a mulligan since this is a preview build, but seriously, we wouldn’t recommend installing this unless you enjoy pulling your hair out.
• There appears to be some sort of orientation bug that prevents us from going landscape, which is what we really wanted. Sorry about that! We’ve shot the video sideways and rotated all of our images; if we’re able to figure it out or a newer build is released with orientation properly working, we’ll update.
• The browser looks great — specifically the UI, which is going to make desktop browser users feel right at home perhaps more than any other tablet browsing experience to date. As with the rest of the emulator, it was too slow to really use — and it kept crashing on us — but we’re digging the look.
• The system for adding and managing widgets is a joy to use — it makes your entire desktop accessible from a single screen, and we like the amount of detail you can preview for each widget before deciding whether to use it and where to place it.
• In general, the window animations and screen transitions seem cool, but none were smooth or fast enough in the emulator to know for sure. Jury’s still out until this gets faster or we’re using Honeycomb on actual tablets.
• We’re not in love with the dim, squashed segmented display that Google is using for the time in the lower right; we’re hoping there are plenty of alternative fonts available.

Since the emulator doesn’t provide a “Google experience” build with access to the Android Market, Gmail, or other “branded” Google apps, we weren’t able to deep-dive on how real-world applications are going to look on the platform — but with any luck, Motorola’s Xoom should be shipping within a few weeks. In the meantime, check out a video after the break!

Update: We’ve figured out the orientation trick — you need to uncheck automatic orientation in Settings, then flip the emulator from landscape to portrait (counterintuitive, we know). We’ll be updating the media as soon as we can!

Update 2: Second video (in the correct orientation this time!) added after the break.

Continue reading Android 3.0 Honeycomb preview emulator hands-on

Android 3.0 Honeycomb preview emulator hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Jan 2011 16:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Maybe you thought the Motorola Xoom would be devoid of — or dare we say, spared from — a coat of Motoblur. Being the inaugural Honeycomb device, you’d expect Google to keep the tablet as vanilla as possible (e.g. G1, Nexus One, Nexus S). Indeed, Android’s director of engineering Dave Burke tells CNET UK that Xoom is a flagship product for Mountain View, but in the same reported meeting, Motorola’s Jonathan Nattrass said Motoblur will be coming to the tablet as a software update. In what form? We don’t know, but if we had to guess, it’s gonna be much more isolated that previous devices — special widgets, perhaps, and services for backup or tracking a lost slate. Let’s play wait-and-see on this one, at least until the top bar gets a cartoonish blue aesthetic.

Update: Motorola reached out to Phandroid to say that, yes, this is a “Google Experience Device” and as such, you should expect the platform and UI to be Google’s. Doesn’t exactly explain where Nattrass got his talking points, but for now let’s call it a strong rebuttal and move on. Certainly we’ll have a clearer picture once we can actually try Xoom / Honeycomb out for ourselves.

Motoblur coming to Xoom as software update, still considered Google flagship product? (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Jan 2011 17:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Maybe, just maybe, you’ve noticed that Engadget relocated this past week to the City of Sin for CES 2011. Oh yes, we set up camp in a double-wide trailer, liveblogged our hearts out, combed the show floor, and worked our rear ends off to bring you more gadget news than you ever thought possible. It’s true, we’ve written over 720 posts (40 or so about tablets alone!), shot more than 180 videos, and brought you over 350 photo galleries in the last seven days. That’s a ton of technology news and products, but naturally, only certain ones have been able to rise above the rest and stick out in our scary collective hive-mind. With that said, we’ve complied our annual best of list for you, so hit the break and feast your eyes on what are bound to be some of the best products of the new year.

Continue reading Best of CES 2011

Best of CES 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 15:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re not going to lie — we’re pretty excited to bring this to you guys. Here at CES 2011 we had a chance to sit down with Matias Duarte, the man behind webOS (as well as the Sidekick and Helio UIs), who’s now heading up Google’s user experience for Android. Matias is currently driving the interface and design for Android 3.0 (AKA Honeycomb), and it’s clear that he’s bringing his big, bold ideas to the Android platform. This is the first video interview Matias has done since leaving Palm, and we pressed the man on his involvement in Gingerbread and Honeycomb, what had to be torn down in Android, how desktop OSs can inform mobile devices, and much, much more. Don’t just take our word for it — follow along after the break and watch the full interview!

Continue reading Exclusive interview: Google’s Matias Duarte talks Honeycomb, tablets, and the future of Android

Exclusive interview: Google’s Matias Duarte talks Honeycomb, tablets, and the future of Android originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 15:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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