Honeycomb?

[elmerendeiro]

http://m.engadget.com/default/artic...for-february-2nd/&category=classic&postPage=1

Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

 

[liam.lah]

So when the Full SDK is released, are we likely to see SDK roms on our Nexii One?

 

[Zaim2]

Stop spreading misinformation.
Honeycomb will have a version for tablets and a version for phones, just like iOS has.
Whether or not the N1 will see an official HC update remains unknown.

Director of Engineering of Android disagrees with you

Since tablets have been announced using the new operating system rumours have been abound that a potted-down version will be coming to smartphones.
But when asked by TechRadar if the new OS would be coming to mobiles in the future, Dave Burke, Director of Engineering of Android at Google said: "We took the opportunity with Android 3.0 to enhance the UI.
"Right now it's a tablet operating system."
However, the spokesperson also said that in the future Google would like to unite the numbers systems [to stop Android 2.x being for smartphones and Android 3.x for tablets].

http://www.techradar.com/news/phone...es/honeycomb-may-never-come-to-mobiles-922897

 

[draugaz]

I really do not understand what is all the fuss about.

It is quite evident, that the android version currently known as "honeycomb" is aimed solely at tablets. And won't show up in phones, because in its current form it is pointless. Why would anyone want such a thing in his/heirs phone?
One could say, that honeycomb is just a gingerbread with tablet specific extensions bolted on and some funky new UI skin. The skin would be cool of course, but I doubt it warrants a new OS revision.

 

[sknoslo]

I really do not understand what is all the fuss about.

It is quite evident, that the android version currently known as "honeycomb" is aimed solely at tablets. And won't show up in phones, because in its current form it is pointless. Why would anyone want such a thing in his/heirs phone?
One could say, that honeycomb is just a gingerbread with tablet specific extensions bolted on and some funky new UI skin. The skin would be cool of course, but I doubt it warrants a new OS revision.

I don't understand why people keep saying this. Andy Rubin, Matias Duarte, and the Honeycomb SDK documentation have all indicated that Honeycomb would not only be for Tablets.
Plus the emulator shows pretty clear evidence that Honeycomb simply displays itself differently on a small screen than it does on a large one.
I guess after Wednesday, we'll probably get to put all of this nonsense to rest.

 

[diversificationied]

I really do not understand what is all the fuss about.

It is quite evident, that the android version currently known as "honeycomb" is aimed solely at tablets. And won't show up in phones, because in its current form it is pointless. Why would anyone want such a thing in his/heirs phone?
One could say, that honeycomb is just a gingerbread with tablet specific extensions bolted on and some funky new UI skin. The skin would be cool of course, but I doubt it warrants a new OS revision.

The "fuss" is because of people like you and the false information you keep repeating about android 3.0 being exclusive to tablets, when it is not.

The operating system is made up of more than just a single view.

 

[draugaz]

The "fuss" is because of people like you and the false information you keep repeating about android 3.0 being exclusive to tablets, when it is not.

The operating system is made up of more than just a single view.

Let's put one thing straight: I never said that gingerbread is the last android version for the phones.
Of course there will be android 3.0 for the phones (or whatever it will be called). Of course it will share framework extensions google did developing honeycomb mentioned in Android 3.0 Platform Highlights where it makes sense. It is in best interests of google to keep the phone and tablet androids as close as possible.
So, yes, honeycomb is not only for tablets.
But I do think, that 3.0 for smartphones won't be a scaled down copy of the current demoed version. Especially regarding new UI components. As stated by google:

Android 3.0 is a new version of the Android platform that is specifically optimized for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets

 

[diversificationied]

It's the same OS with different views.

It's not two versions of android. If you think that, you are wrong.

 

[draugaz]

It's the same OS with different views.

It's not two versions of android. If you think that, you are wrong.

You mean a "version" as in "build" or "binary image"?

Would be a very strange thing to do, since it would mean a lot of bloat to carry around. It won't help anyone, since apps will still need to use the phone layout for phones and tablet layouts for tablets.
Like for example, googles own email app. Specifically for tablets it was updated to have the two pane UI. Would you like using such an app on a screen which is some 2 inches wide? I certainly don't.
So the developers will still need to work on 2 different concepts: single pane apps for small screens and 2 (or more) pane apps for big screens.
The OS alone can't make it somehow magically work, since it is not a trivial problem if you want to do it properly. It requires 2 different designs.
Or for example the new system bar with soft buttons. What is the point of such a thing on a phone? You loose that precious LCD area, you loose consistency across the apps (one of the big android UI advantages) and you still have just 4 buttons due to the limited space.
And so on. Thus I think there should(will) be two different versions with different features. The framework underneath can be mostly the same, but you will be forced to make some things different. Exactly like there are two different iOS flawors, one for iphone and another one for ipad. Otherwise it would not make any sense to release the gingerbread and honeycomb in such a short cycle.

 

[diversificationied]

You mean a "version" as in "build" or "binary image"?

Would be a very strange thing to do, since it would mean a lot of bloat to carry around. It won't help anyone, since apps will still need to use the phone layout for phones and tablet layouts for tablets.
Like for example, googles own email app. Specifically for tablets it was updated to have the two pane UI. Would you like using such an app on a screen which is some 2 inches wide? I certainly don't.
So the developers will still need to work on 2 different concepts: single pane apps for small screens and 2 (or more) pane apps for big screens.
The OS alone can't make it somehow magically work, since it is not a trivial problem if you want to do it properly. It requires 2 different designs.
Or for example the new system bar with soft buttons. What is the point of such a thing on a phone? You loose that precious LCD area, you loose consistency across the apps (one of the big android UI advantages) and you still have just 4 buttons due to the limited space.
And so on. Thus I think there should(will) be two different versions with different features. The framework underneath can be mostly the same, but you will be forced to make some things different. Exactly like there are two different iOS flawors, one for iphone and another one for ipad. Otherwise it would not make any sense to release the gingerbread and honeycomb in such a short cycle.

It's not magic and that's exactly the support that is being added to 3.0. The X-Large res layout support and fragment views allows a larger screen to display two views at a time and views within views.

In GMail on the phone you open up your inbox view, then from there the view changes to the message view.

Gmail on the tablet will open up a nested layout, where the same inbox view is limited to only a portion of the screen on the left, and the message view is flowed to the right side of the screen. None of this requires anymore more than a different .xml layout and some foresight in layout design.

Gmail will be one .apk for phones and tablets. Gmaps will be one .apk for phones and tablets.

The Action Bar is nothing more than an expanded view of the menu button on the phone. One the phone those options will be hidden under the menu key, unless a dev specifically adds the action bar to a medium/large screen layout.

Same thing with the new system bar that replaces physical soft keys, it's nothing more than a different representation of the current four softkeys, but expanded.

Basically if layout = X-Large then use system bar/action bar if layout =! X-Large then use softkeys/hide action bar.

But, no one is going to believe this, until Wedsneday, then everyone is going to go "omg google is magical and has included a wizardry api into 3.0!".

 

[Award Tour]

Andy Rubin: Very vague statement of what's on Honeycomb is going to be on phones.

Duarte: What's shown on Honeycomb is the overall direction of Android.

Documentation: Apps will be compatible.

Director of Engineering: The current Honeycomb build was made specifically for tablets.

I don't think anyone thinks that Honeycomb is completely new OS. It's Android. We all know that. But it's Android with tablet specific assets and resources. Run it in a phone resolution and all of that new neat Honeycomb stuff is either broken or not there. The launcher, which is the biggest most exiting UI change, is broken. The new taskbar isn't there. The new settings display is not designed for that resolution. You basically get a broken version of the old phone UI mixed with obviously non-phone friendly tablet elements. What does that mean? The current Honeycomb build is not made for phones. The core is the same but everything else was made for tablets. That's all we are saying.

In the future we'll see the new UI skin on phones and probably a lot of the new UI features re-designed and re-conceptualized to work on phones. But the Honeycomb that will be on the Xoom, etc., will not be appropriate to use on phones.

 

[eabinsan]

that's why it is called a _preview_ SDK. not all apps are finished, as they most likely finish the tablet layouts first to be able to push out the XOOM as quickly as possibly. But before the final release, those things will have to be cleared up, because devs do not want to use two different SDKs for development.

So there will be an SDK which will enable a dev to build one single apk that can run on a tablet as well as on a phone, just like JCopernicus explained above. the market will automatically filter apps that are not compatible with the current screen resolution, if a dev really chooses to make his app exclusive to some display size.

edit: in fact, you can already use the current preview SDK to build such apps, only the bundled core parts are not finished yet.

 

[faizalmzain]

Andy Rubin: Very vague statement of what's on Honeycomb is going to be on phones.

Duarte: What's shown on Honeycomb is the overall direction of Android.

Documentation: Apps will be compatible.

Director of Engineering: The current Honeycomb build was made specifically for tablets.

I don't think anyone thinks that Honeycomb is completely new OS. It's Android. We all know that. But it's Android with tablet specific assets and resources. Run it in a phone resolution and all of that new neat Honeycomb stuff is either broken or not there. The launcher, which is the biggest most exiting UI change, is broken. The new taskbar isn't there. The new settings display is not designed for that resolution. You basically get a broken version of the old phone UI mixed with obviously non-phone friendly tablet elements. What does that mean? The current Honeycomb build is not made for phones. The core is the same but everything else was made for tablets. That's all we are saying.

In the future we'll see the new UI skin on phones and probably a lot of the new UI features re-designed and re-conceptualized to work on phones. But the Honeycomb that will be on the Xoom, etc., will not be appropriate to use on phones.

isn't andy himself stated that honeycomb will display differently for phone, yes you won't see the UI in honeycomb tablets in your mobile phones.
no dual panes etc.
the apps developer have the option to design the layout of their app differently for mobile phones and tablets.

 

[jivemaster]

I really do not understand what is all the fuss about.

The fuss is gpu acceleration. For the first time we will get epic visual performance across the board. It's the most exciting update to date. How you could not be excited is beyond me.

 

[eabinsan]

as was repeatedly stated by the android team, 2D HW acceleration does not automatically translate to awesome, fluid animations.

Example: If you scroll through a list, the objects that will be shown next may be generated on the fly. If the creation of the next item takes too long, you will still get stuttering, because the list can't move along until the new item is fully created. So the devs will still need to make sure they can provide list items _very_ fast, and e.g. load details like images lazily and update the list items later.

And there are many more examples that influence fluidity of animations of course.

 

[draugaz]

So there will be an SDK which will enable a dev to build one single apk that can run on a tablet as well as on a phone, just like JCopernicus explained above. the market will automatically filter apps that are not compatible with the current screen resolution, if a dev really chooses to make his app exclusive to some display size.

edit: in fact, you can already use the current preview SDK to build such apps, only the bundled core parts are not finished yet.

To me this whole discussion starts to look as one big missunderstanding.
For my part I have never said or ment, that there will be two different SDK's. The SDK is one thing, the OS actually running on device is completely another. So I with JCopernicus on this one, it will certainly be possible to build the apps using just one SDK.
BUT the point I actually argued about is that current Android 3.0 release (as it is demoed now) is not ment for the phones. It was just an reaction on questions here in the thread like "omg, phones with no buttons as seen on honeycomb tablets" or "when do we get it for our nexuses".
Yes, we (or owners of the next nexuses) will get something. But I do expect (and this is just my opinion and not the "information" somehow backed by facts) almost everything seen in the 3.0 demos will remain on the tablets and won't appear in the 3.0 phone edition. Except system framework extensions, color scheme and other cosmetics of course.

And by the way, the real phone/tablet support problem is not just a question of building one or two apk's. It is not difficult and is fully automatic nowadays.

 

[eabinsan]

Actually, your post sums up my opinion on this matter pretty well.

 

[diversificationied]

The "visuals" of 3.0 can literally be broken down into about 70 pngs and 15 xml files. There's nothing special about it's visuals, those pngs are .9 pngs that will work at a variety of sizes.

We might finally see competent landscape views now as well on phone apps thanks to the fragment views.

You could technically also use the system bar and action bar on a small screen device if you wanted to.

I'm assuming phones near the end of the year will be doing this as MFGs move way from soft buttons, and full coverage screens(HTC is already jumping on this). (p.s. *DROOL*)

 

[sknoslo]

The final 3.0 sdk is out. This build actually works quite well on a Nexus One sized emulator. The launcher and lock screen both look like gingerbread (with the exception of the notification bar. It is not flat black anymore. and the clock on the lock screen is honeycomb font) The built in apps display themselves as you would expect for a phone resolution, including the new widgets. The Honeycomb animations display about as well as you would expect for an emulator build. The "Holographic" theme looks really neat on pop up windows and such.

Despite the various reports that it will not work on phones... I suspect when the code drops it'll pretty much work out of the box. I also suspect that all of the flagship Honeycomb tablet manufacturers paid for exclusivity so that Google would claim it is just for tablets. So I'm guessing, officially, we wont see Honeycomb for phones until Ice Cream, at which point it will just be Honeycomb with a new name and maybe some added features.

 

[diversificationied]

The final 3.0 sdk is out. This build actually works quite well on a Nexus One sized emulator. The launcher and lock screen both look like gingerbread (with the exception of the notification bar. It is not flat black anymore. and the clock on the lock screen is honeycomb font) The built in apps display themselves as you would expect for a phone resolution, including the new widgets. The Honeycomb animations display about as well as you would expect for an emulator build. The "Holographic" theme looks really neat on pop up windows and such.

Despite the various reports that it will not work on phones... I suspect when the code drops it'll pretty much work out of the box. I also suspect that all of the flagship Honeycomb tablet manufacturers paid for exclusivity so that Google would claim it is just for tablets. So I'm guessing, officially, we wont see Honeycomb for phones until Ice Cream, at which point it will just be Honeycomb with a new name and maybe some added features.

Google never claimed it's just for tablets, they said it was built from the ground up for tablets. Which is true, the XLarge screen support is new, and only for tablets. There is nothing stopping a manufacturer from targeting 3.0 once it's AOSP. Google approched people building tablets so they can fit it properly.

It appears they haven't given too much though to updating the small/medium/large layouts, but I'm hoping they're keeping it close to their chest for wow factor.