Google’s Rubin Demos Motorola Android 3.0 Honeycomb Tablet — InformationWeek. (my apologies in advance, I’m looking for a better site that doesn’t reload itself every few minutes).
This is just too awesome not to say anything about.
First off- Google Maps 5.0 looks very cool for a few reasons. First, many people don’t know that an Android phone will have at least some navigation offline, but this adds the ability to do an offline cache. So, for people like me that are stuck carrying two smartphones (until we can virtualize the phones – today’s other article of note); I could essentially kill the dataplan on the personal phone (my Droid), connect wi-fi to sync the Google Maps, and still be able to use navigation effectively, which currently is the only reason I even keep my data plan going since the company is paying for the dataplan on the Blackberry (which has the world’s worst navigation system; you’re safer texting while driving than using their navigation system while driving)
Second – we have to talk about Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” – I’m sure there’s a lot more to it, but adding a ‘slice’ to the API instead of making a whole other OS like certain fruity computer companies are doing… means that you’ll have a lot of ability to have backwards-compatibility while having applications be able to be smart about choosing their interface.
Third- I used to be a Motorola hater. But after being burned by Apple, it seems their internal anger has been put to good use by creating iPhone killers in the Droid, DroidX, Droid2 and Droid Pro… now they’re going after iPad with what looks to be an amazingly powerful device. I’ll be curious to see what kind of battery life, weight and everything like that will be involved, but choosing nVidia for the 3D aspects is a good call. It won’t be long before rival Intel is knocking on the door given their new chipsets, but working with the industry leader in graphics is a good sign. Look for an unrivaled interface experience and hopefully Motorola’s reputation for durable products.
