Google Says Honeycomb Will Not Come To Smartphones 193
tekgoblin writes "Google has officially announced that Honeycomb will not be coming to Android based smartphones. Android 3.0 Honeycomb was specifically made for Tablets according to a Google spokesperson. Although, certain features that are present on Honeycomb will become available over time on Android smartphones. Google has not offered any information to what features will be ported over specifically."
On the bright side, Honeycomb will come with disk-encryption capabilities built in.
Okay, can someone please break it down for me? (Score:4, Interesting)
The following is a legit set of questions...
First, are tablet PCs *REALLY* the future of computing? I mean, PADDs were cool on Star Trek and all, but are they really more desirable than either smaller form factor laptops and/or the iPod Touch and its ilk on a grand scale? I realize that not everyone is like me and needs to carry around an 11-pound laptop everywhere, but despite the current iPad/Galaxy Tab craze, is it really likely that tablets will be the de facto laptop replacement in five years?
Second, and more relevant to the topic, what's the major difference at an OS level in Honeycomb that makes it ideal for a tablet that's either 1.) unsuitable for mobile phones, or 2.) optimized for a tablet? I can see things at the application level that could be different (a bleeding obvious example being the Office 2007/2010 Ribbon), and making apps optimized for a tablet sized display would yield different capabilities, the least of which being a little UI scaling so there aren't unnecessary empty areas where additional controls could replace cascading menus,but at the OS level, what kind of tablet optimizations would make the code so radically different from smartphones and iPod Touch clones that it deserves its own fork?
Re:Okay, can someone please break it down for me? (Score:5, Interesting)
For most users the answer is "Yes, these are the devices of the future of computing".
I bought my iPad about a year ago. By July I stopped carrying a laptop. I didn't need it anymore and once I was able to get printing from the iPad, it did everything I needed at home and 95% of what I needed at work. I still have to dive into code/troubleshoot technical problems at work, but even that is getting less often. I still have an iMac there. I bought one of those bluetooth keyboard cases from think geek over christmas, but before that I used a docking station at home and the wireless keyboard at the office.
But as far as email, word processing, spreadsheets, and even presentations go, I can do all of that on my iPad now. Even our SVN hosting has an iPad/iPhone app that I can check bug report status messages, assign tasks, etc.. If Barebones came out with BBEdit for iPad, I probably could get away with not even having a computer at work. (None of the work I do involves compiling anymore).