By Phandroid was at Google’s Honeycomb event yesterday, enjoying demos of the latest rendition of Android made especially for tablets and happily browsing the new Android Market website. After the presentation, David snagged some video of apps running on the Motorola XOOM which were developed using tools specific Android 3.0 Honeycomb.
Pulse News on the Motorola XOOM
Of the Honeycomb apps demoed, I was most impressed with Pulse News. Although you can see a few hiccups along the way, I love the way they’ve been mindful of the tablet environment to create an experience that is specific to tablets. Scrolling through stories seemed swift and the split-screen view looked fantastic. The concept of applications change when you’ve got a larger screen to work with and Pulse News emphasizes this point by rethinking their app for tablets yet keeping the same overall look and feel that has become their brand.
SwiftKey on the Motorola XOOM
Personally, I use the default Android keyboard, but I’m sure there are a number of people out there who will find THIS to be the most exciting of the exclusive Honeycomb
apps previewed. I definitely appreciate his point about reaching your thumbs into the center of the screen being annoying and difficult, so for some I can see this being a great experience.
AccuWeather & WeatherBug on the Motorola XOOM
I was least impressed with the weather apps shown on Honeycomb. In my opinion, you don’t really need a full screen to display weather in the first place. You typically want to know the current weather and maybe – at most – a 10-day forecast. The one element I did enjoy was the weather cams that shows the video from locations so you can get an idea of what it looks like outside. Beyond that, sure the weather apps were cool, but to me they didn’t highlight why Honeycomb is so great on tablets. Not at the fault of the developers, just as a result of the subject matter.
What apps and games are you most excited to see on Honeycomb tablets?
Yep. THis has sealed it – I’m gettin a damn xoom.
Personally I’m looking forward to the XBMC remote for Honeycomb.
Using the tablet to browse through my selection of movies or TV shows, seems much more convenient to me than having to read on the tv-screen.
Do you know if instead of different cities for the weatherbug stack widget if you can do different days?
Scrolling through the week forecast like that would be awesome
Still want to know where BlindType is.
Will Verizon have a FiOS app like they have on the iPad.
Great call Rob. Overall seeing different cities is cool, but most of the time you want to know current conditions, high for the day, low for the day, and chance of rain or snow from weather. Weatherbug for android phones squeezes all of that into the status bar pull-down and a 1×1 widget. I hope they have more option, as you usually don’t need weather in various cities on a daily basis, and usually when you need another city, it’s just ONE other city.
I don’t think BlindType would be that useful on tablets, but sure why not. I think we’ll see it in the phone version that will be released at Google I/O, though.
Swiftkey dev:
“Our app probably won’t be ready by XOOM launch, we’re hoping for a march/april release”
Sweet, early launch for the XOOM then.
I’m sooooo pumped for the Xoom! Also for the latest on Xoom visit the XoomClub.com …fyi ;)
The pulse news app looks awesome! Just downloaded it for my Evo. Motorola struck a great deal b/c Android 3.0 is definitely the most innovative OS to grace a tablet form factor… and to be the 1st tablet to sport it, DAY ONE PURCHASE.
I don’t even care at this point, but I’m very interested to see how Apple will respond with the ipad 2??? They’ve never made such progressive innovations in any previous iOS updates. Failure to do so now will almost certainly crush any further market domination in the tablet market.
XOOM is released on Feb 24th. Best Buy said so on their facebook
Be cautious.
Motorola probably won’t support this any better than they supported their Cliq XT.
Sure, it’s pretty, but it’s Motorola… it’ll end with you having a useless paperweight.
It looks nice but thumb keyboard has had a split keyboard like this for a while
just got rid of pulse.
it’s a nuisance to have the tiles popping up and down at the bottom every time I touch the screen.
videos too often don’t load.
tiles frequently cover buttons I want to access, and won’t operate as intended because tiles are popping up and down.
of course, if that’s how pulse was designed to work, it’s fine.
and no customer support.
junk.
@ Hugh2D2
Well, the Cliq XT was a P.O.S in the first place, but their quality stuff continues to be supported. My Droid (the first Droid) is up to date, rumor has it that the Droid X will be getting Gingerbread soon and if the X is gonna get it, pretty sure that the Droid 2 will be getting it as well. If you saw the Cliq XT and said “I like this phone and I’m going to buy it”, then you’re probably the type of person that either just got the phone because it looked cool, but completely ignored the specs therefore any resources used for updating it would probably be a waste OR you were someone looking for an iPhone-like phone on T-Mo who really didn’t care that the phone ran Android there for you still don’t care about the phone being updated.
@Hugh2D2
By your posting the same comment on multiple Motorola stories, I can see that you feel you got “burned” with your Moto Cliq XT. However, I have an original Moto Droid and the OTA updates/support have been great for it. So, does this prove the opposite (that Moto’s great and doesn’t abandon phones)? Or, just (as I’ve read) that it was the Cliq XT that couldn’t handle the 2.X upgrade… not Motorola’s lack of trying (I read Motorola spent months testing/trying to upgrade it). The great thing about android is that you don’t have to buy Moto. next time. Personally, I have nothing bad to say about Moto… and I’m drooling over their Xoom. I’m sure in the future there will be an android 4.x or 5.x that won’t run on it. At that point, I’ll have to keep it or upgrade (just like you and your phone). But, it won’t be a “useless paperweight”, and neither is your phone, if they still run fine on the last OS released for them.