Android Honeycomb review

Google guys are quite clear what they do: when it was just Froyo they told us that it is not designed for tablets and is just specifically for smartphones and that we need to wait for the next version to run tablets. And now they have finally delivered on their word. Android Honeycomb is a vast change from what we have experience from Android 2.x. It has a brand new UI and functionality to fill in the large screens of the tablets. It debuted on Motorola Xoom and its latest release has been on Samsung Galaxy tab 10.1.

User interface of Android Honeycomb

Since its debut, Android has evolved multi homescreens and widgets layout for smartphones and now it has expanded it further for the larger interaction area on tablets. Honeycomb has five panes of homescreens each one having an 8×7 grid of icons and widgets. Like in smartphones the smallest widget size is 1×1 square and larger sizes are also available but here we see more interactive widgets for instance the Gmail widget not only shows the most 3 recent mail (be it the inbox or labelled ones) instead you can also scroll down to see the more older mails.
Honeycomb doesn’t require hardware button and instead the home, back, menu and search buttons are replaced by on-screen persistent Action Bar (at the top of the screen) and System Bar (at the bottom of the screen). The action bar changes according to the app in use; for example when at the desktop it shows the Google search button, Voice Actions trigger, Apps menu button and homescreen editing button. App buttons are placed in the bar for instance in You Tube app you see the search or share button in the Action bar. The options (copy, paste, share, web-search and local find options) you used to receive when highlighting a sentence of a word after tapping a word and using the pull tab buttons to increase the selection are no longer in the floating form like they used to be in your smartphone and now you instead get those in the action bar.
Meanwhile, the lower system bar has taken up the place of the hardware buttons with option for back, home and app switcher on left and wireless status, status, clock, notifications on the right. Like in your Windows desktop it is mostly on-screen but fades out to a “lights out mode” in full screen apps like in video playback. Tapping on the system bar shows more comprehensive information regarding which wireless connection you are connected to, the clock and volume settings.
Android notification system has always been a comprehensive one but now it has been further improved due to the availability of more screen space. Now you get to see more information in each of your alert: for instance new messages and missed calls will now show the name as well as the photo of the sender if present, if music is playing in background then you have play/pause and skip track controls so that you need not leave your current app to control your music experience. Unlike the Froyo 2.x system you can clear off the notifications individually rather than using the clear all option. Even though it is not as perfect as the webOS ystem but it is still much better than the clucky iOS 4 notification system on iPad and gives access to much more information than HP TouchPad.
The app switcher on Honeycomb is a vast improvement and is better than the iOS system too. Select the app switcher button in system bar and you get the preview of all the softwares running in back with 5 at an instance and the rest on scrolling. Unlike the iOS these processes continue to run and show as such even when they don’t have you focus unlike in iOS. This makes the work easier for developers who don’t have to program their apps to work with only the limited background process APIs available to them. Google was quick to point out that this is true multitasking. However this comes with the disadvantage of lowered battery life and multi-app performance limitations.
The on-screen keyboard for text entry has been redesigned with ideas from Apple’s on-screen keyboard. Like iOS, Android has shifted the number row to a secondary layout which can be easily shifted to by a dedicated Tab key. The keyboard is customized for individual apps for example in your browser you get a dedicated .com key which can be held down for other suffixes or the emoticon button. Thankfully, here you can hold the shift and other keys due to the simultaneous touch capability. Double tapping on the shift key does the Caps function. We experience no problem in text inputting and the auto complete feature worked well with suggestions for words as well as URL. Adding to dictionary is extremely simplified. If you have to do much more intensive text input you can connect a external keyboard through keyboard.
In many places Google has extended the Android functionalities to third party apps. For instance an Android OS search is not only for query on your browser history, apps, contacts and music but can also search through your ebook collection on Kindle, Dropbox files and Evernote notes. Alternatvely you can also limit the Android search by telling it to bypass you personal information, your location or sme specific app.
Search themselves are equipped with auto complete functionality with the search showing auto complete terms on left and apps, contacts, Google search and others on the right. As most of these tablets will have high speed processor like Xoom’s tegra processor you will not face any lag in the immediate search results.
Voice command uses the same system as on the smartphones. You can play a track by saying “Listen to…” and the name of the music track and similarly to a destination on Google maps use the voice command “Navigate to….” and the name of the place. The voice processing is done of the server side and not on the tablet processor so you will need an active data connection to use this feature.
The default theme has an elegant and slick look which is not intimidation for a new user nor does it look dumb for an expert user. Buttons are easy to find when needed and they still not crowd the interface area. There is an expert consistency between apps, even third party apps which takes care of all the complains that previous Android versions received about disjointed app experience compared to iOS. Cool effects have been added in animations without compromising on navigation. While moving a icon on the homescreen the exact outline of the icon is left behind which gives the impression that in addition to improvement in background performance Google engineers have also given a lot of work designing the interface of Honeycomb Android.

Browser of Honeycomb Android

The major function that most people will perform with a tablet will be web browsing so it has to be good. Honeycomb supports tabs feature of tablet rather than the new windows feature and Honeycomb also supports pinch to zoom. In Motorola Xoom it worked extremely fast with easy scrolling and worked without any lag.
Flash for Honeycomb was not available at its launch however it has been added now. HTML5 support is also present.
Incognito windows is supported which allows you private browsing, meaning that there will be no record of your browsing history in history, bookmarks or even the cookies. There is option for bookmark sync with Chrome browser as well as for an automatic sign in system on the pages requiring Google account credentials by using the stored Google id information in your Honeycomb tablet. However this is of no use if you have a separate personal and business email account.
Most useful in the browser are the Quick Controls. You can activate this option in the browser settings. It provides you easy access to forward/back, page refresh, Go to, menu, bookmarks and add-to-bookmarks. Just swipe you finger of the left or the right edges to bring the crescent of options. If your thumb is long enough then you can navigate without removing your hands from the tablet however for access to a list in the bookmarks or for typing a URL you need to lift your hand to finger tap the text.

Messaging in Honeycomb Android OS

Presence of two email apps continue in Honeycomb from its previous versions. You have the dedicated Gmail separate of all other email types. If you totally depend on Gmail for your multiple contacts, labels, and support for push messaging then this app is the right thing for you. However, if you use some other email type then you will have to set up the POP, IMAP or Exchange support. The interface is multipane in both the apps with the headers being shown on the left side and the starting part of body on the right side.
To help you organize your mail liberal use of labels and folders has been done. You can easily drag and assign mails to any category. Here the only concern is for any lag in the dragging experience, however with the powerful Tegra processor of Xoom the drag process was smoothly done. Both the email apps can be used simultaneously. Honeycomb has the best combination of some common desktop behaviors and while not missing out of the finger touch input ease of a tablet.
Honeycomb features live gtalk video chat as well as IM conversations. Place the contact you chat often on the homescreen and you can see their online/offline status and after initiating the chat with a text message; hit the camera button and video call rings.
By default the video chat will be launched from the front facing camera but you can swap to the rear camera by choosing the camera flip option. GTalk video calls work with the Mac and PC desktop app too which can be downloaded for free. Picture quality will mostly depend upon the camera resolution but as far as Honeycomb is concerned it provides a bug free service. Setting up the video chat required a bit more steps than you will get on FaceTime on iOS devices.

Camera performance on Honeycomb OS

Previous Android versions are one of the disappointing features of camera, but in Honeycomb thankfully Google has updated the interface with fresh layout and controls. There are a lot of controls in the interface with the previous windows taking up most of the space and the controls clustered at the right hand side of the screen. Zoom in –out buttons are at the top along with switch button for front and rear cameras. At the bottom there is the button for toggling between videos and images.
In-between is the new circular control wheel, with the shutter-release in the center, surrounded by a ring of effects, scene, focus and other settings. These include flash (on, off, auto), white balance (auto, incandescent, daylight, fluorescent), color effect (none, mono, sepia, negative, solarize, posterize), scene mode (auto, action, portrait, landscape, night, night portrait, theatre, beach, snow, sunset, steady photo, fireworks) and then a settings menu with controls for focus mode, exposure, picture size and picture quality. The most recently captures photos are shown as thumbnails in the bottom left corner tapping on which opens up the gallery.
Image and video quality obviously depends on the hardware but browsing and watching images and videos is a much better experience due to the updated interface. The photos in the gallery are organized in folders with one for downloaded, recently captured and if any other you have set up. Tapping on any one of them gives a full screen view with the lower end showing a smaller timeline of shots through which you can scroll along easily. In the action bar there is a button to kickstart slideshow and a share button to email, message or share a image by some other method. If you tablet has a HDMI port lie Motorola Xoom then you can connect your tablet to a HD TV to see the images in big screen. On connecting you get a mirrored show on your tablet as well on the TV.

Multimedia on Android Honeycomb

If the camera interface in the previous Android was not liked by users then the multimedia was practically hated. So Google engineers have happily given the interface a new touch along with a few changes in the functionalities without slowing down the browsing. There is a 3D wall of albums or Artists which can be flipped with a drop down menu in the top left corner. There is a timeline of your recently and newly added content.
Alternatively you can view the song list in alphabetical order of the Artists or the album along with a genre of the song. You can also create a playlist of your favorite songs by two options: either create a blank playlist and then add the songs or select the song and in the individual contest menu tap “Add to Playlist” option. The now playing list shows the album art, artist, title, album name and a scrub bar with the option for shuffle/repeat.
Video list is show in a simple grid or list view however Honeycomb by default supports very few formats namely H.263, H.264, MPEG-4 and VP8, in .3gp, .mp4 and WebM containers which is quite disappointing considering multimedia is always a focus for handheld devices. One can turn to RockPlayer and vPlayer in this case instead to fill these gaps which cover most of the missing format in high definition full screen mode.
Like on all Androids these is a dedicated You Tube app which considering the absent flash support is very useful. This also has been given a new touch with a 3D wall of videos to select from. It shows off Honeycomb’s 3D acceleration more than anything else but in any case it works smoothly. There is a channel and search functionality to filter the videos according to the video age. With the bigger screen it is useful to be able to increase the font size and you can also force the Honeycomb to stream HD videos even when on a cellular connection.
Plugging any Android tablet into a computer will show it as a removable disk but with Honeycomb there is a new OS X sync tool. Once installed (on OS X 10.5 and above systems) on connecting the tablet it automatically shows Android File Transfer which allows you to browse through files and folders. You can also easily transfer files to and fro from the computer and the tablet as long as the files are under the size of 4GB. But I still wonder why Google is still not developing a proper syncing app like iTunes or Microsoft’s Zune manager.

Google maps on Android Honeycomb

Google has done a lot of slimming down of the data usage in Google maps which was first seen in smartphones and now it has carried over in Honeycomb. Rather than using vector based imagery it has been shifted to dynamic imagery which leads to quicker apps and less data traffic. This now allows caching of common or frequently searched journeys which allows you to use the Maps even in the absence of a data connection. It might not be that useful on a tablet but it is still a nice addition and Google’s 3D buildings look great of the screen.
Improved gesture support allows you to tilt the map and then rotate it using chiral-twist movement. If you tablet has a digital compass as most of the latest compasses have then you can synchronize the maps to the direction you are moving in. Zooming in is much more smoother and Street view looks great.

Apps in Android Honeycomb

Nowadays it is impossible to imagine a lone platform without an ecosystem of apps and developers. Google as a large community of developers for this purpose and it comes second only to Apple. The best thing is that most of the previous apps should work on Honeycomb as long as they Google’s guidelines for best code practice.
Unlike Apple iPad where screen double up when using app here full screen mode is by default set and interface usability is nice. Most of the apps work as you will expect them to however a few can be a little blocky. The bigger problem is the screen estate that these softwares use, an app designed for a 4 inch smartphone screen doesn’t look right on a 10 inch tablet screen. Developers need to go back to the drawing board to create tablet centric UIs even if their app is still functional on the tablet. To help with this Google this week released the official Android 3.0 Honeycomb SDK, complete with final APIs which will help developers to refresh the softwares and launch the soon.

Security in Android Honeycomb

With tablets making a big entrance in official circles as an alternative to laptops Google has made sure that Honeycomb has at least the basic security features. There is a PIN lock system for the homescreen but the gesture lock system found in smartphones has been shelved here. However you can encrypt the data on tablet. Google had told reviewers that it would take some time to encrypt the whole data on tablet and they were quite right- it took about an hour to completely encrypt the whole data. In case you forget the PIN the only way around is completely hard formatting the tablet and thereby losing all your data. There is also the option for completely wiping off the data by remotely.
Android 3.0 has hotpot support for sharing 3G/4G data with up to five Wi-Fi tethered clients. The other connectivity options are USB tethering, portable Wi-Fi hotspot and Bluetooth tethering. Like on Android smartphones it works well in tablets too however it does take a big hit on battery.

Wrap up

To say that Honeycomb is just a deviation from previous Android versions will be an understatement. From some insider news we know that Honeycomb has been the biggest effort from Android engineers till now and that effort shows. Honeycomb platform is consistent, complete and efficient. At no instance do you feel that functionality has been compromised for aesthetics and still you get an amazing interactive appearance with animations and all the gloss of a modern tablet platform.
It is not wrong to say it a tablet Android platform because there is just no way that you can say that it is a blown up version of Android smartphone OS. In fact sometimes you will feel it is not Android at all with the absent pull down status bar, shift to on-screen navigation buttons. The interactive, appealing platform is not only modern but is very easy to use even for a new Android user.
Third party app developers need to work a little bit to polish their apps for Honeycomb tablet experience. However until that happens the previous apps work mostly without any problems and this will keep it ahead of web-OS,QNX and other tablet OS in the market.
After introducing the first Android smartphone OS just back in 2008, Google has come a long way and has designed the Android 3.0 with suitably class-leading hardware which is difficult to compete with. The first batch of tablets might have some wrinkles like the absence of Flash – but 2011 looks like the age of production of some great Android 3.0 OS tablets.

Posted in: Android