Google Talk Definitely Getting Video Chat in Honeycomb, Confirmed by Rubin’s Slip-Up
When we posted our “This Hour in Nexus S and Gingerbread” report earlier this morning, I wondered if Google Talk was really getting voice and video features. It’s something we heard might’ve been in the works for Gingerbread long before Google announced it, and new evidence from the SDK files uncovered the same Video and Voice icons we see when using the desktop version of Google Talk.
But that was all before I actually watched the video of Andy Rubin at All Things D’s Dive Into Mobile fireside chat where Rubin inadvertently let us know that his Google Talk was open. And that it had video chat icons. And that we shouldn’t have seen that. And now we know for sure that Google’s working to include this into Honeycomb. (Seriously, Rubin, you should’ve just hit the home button and not have said anything, bud.)
Voice calling wasn’t confirmed in the same way, but I can’t imagine it’ll be left out either. We’re still wondering why the icons appear in Gingerbread’s SDK if they’re not due until Honeycomb, but it’s likely they just wanted to get the resources in now so they wouldn’t have to worry about them later. Or Google Talk could be getting decoupled from Android and headed to the Android market once these new features arrive. Who really knows? No one but Google, for now.