Google reveals Android 3.0 Honeycomb for Tablets, Honeycomb features

09/1/2011 7 Comments

Google has unveiled it’s new version of Android, Android 3.0 Honeycomb at CES. Android Honeycomb is specially designed for tablets. and the first tablet to run on Android 3.0 is Motorola Xoom.

Motorola Xoom

To read about Android Gingerbread, view :

Let’s have a look at Android 3.0 features :

1. User Interface

The new user interface is a lot improved and more user-friendly than what you have seen in the previous Android versions. The home screen has been distributed into four sections :

  1. The top right corner has shortcut to apps and home screen widget customizations, from where you can add or remove widgets to your home screen.
  2. The top left corner has the ‘Google search’ option, which provides both text and voice search.
  3. The bottom right area shows battery status, time, date Wi-fi.
  4. The bottom left has options for going back, jump to home, switching between apps.

2. Keyboard

The QWERTY keyboard of Honeycomb has a few differences from the QWERTY keyboard of Gingerbread. For instance, the ‘symbols’ key have moved to above ‘shift’, a tab key has been placed in top left, ‘delete’ is in the top right  with ‘enter’ right below it and there is a second ‘shift’ below ‘enter’.

These images show both the keyboards.

Honeycomb keyboard

Gingerbread keyboard

3. Browser

The new browser is much like Chrome, and has all features like tabbed browsing, incognito mode, and bookmarking.

4. Gmail and Gtalk

Gmail looks very neat and elegant. All the standard features are present and have been very intelligently laid in reach. It has a two-column format with the menu on the left, and the mailbox/message on the right.

G talk too has a two column format with your contacts on the left side. Video chat has been enhanced with features like switching between front and rear camera, muting audio, and mixing videos.

5. Books

You can flick through the books, in a row, unlike the tiled view of Gingerbread. The two-page view is great.

6. Maps

The top bar is expanded, and the pop-up menus are tablet friendly, while the rest is the same as before.


In all, Android 3.0 Honeycomb seems to be an amazing operating system, and is the best version of Android till now. It would be interesting to see how Honeycomb adapts to smartphones…

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Android, Applications, News, Operating System
android, android 3.0 honeycomb, gingerbread, gmail, google, gtalk, maps, tablet, widgets

7 Responses to “Google reveals Android 3.0 Honeycomb for Tablets, Honeycomb features”

  1. Chethan Rao Reply 09/1/2011 at 6:11 pm

    Android 2.3 or simply known as Honeycomb is the first tablet oriented OS by Android. So cellphone companies implementing this particular OS is a long shot. And I was a bit confused by the mention of a QWERTY keyboard here. I was actually thinking about a physical keyboard popping out of the tablet. But that just seems absurd. And you seem to have confused the maps widget with the gmail widget. Please look into it. I don’t see anything about maps here. Anyways, good post.
    Chethan Rao recently posted..This is how Gingerbread would look like on an iPhone 3G

    • admin Reply 10/1/2011 at 7:29 am

      First of all thanks for correcting me (on the maps video), I embedded the wrong video…and a physical keypad with tablets does seem absurd. By QWERTY keyboard, I mean the touch keyboard.
      Also, Honeycomb is Android 3.0, Android 2.3 is Gingerbread…Thanks for commenting!

  2. Chethan Rao Reply 10/1/2011 at 7:37 am

    Ah, sorry about that, I seem to have confused myself. Android 2.3 is actually Gingerbread. My bad. :)
    Chethan Rao recently posted..This is how Gingerbread would look like on an iPhone 3G