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  • bplewis24 - Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - link

    Is there any doubt that Duarte was the driving force behind Honeycomb now? The lead designer for WebOS gets nabbed up less than a year ago, and a version of one of the best features of WebOS (Deck-of-Cards multi-tasking) ends up making an appearance. Coincidence?
  • Samus - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link

    Only time will tell if Hurd is as benificial to Oracal...
  • InternetGeek - Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - link

    I like the market. Looks clean, works fast and you can get stuff done.

    My only qualm is that it seems that for a while now Google has been filtering the apps available to you not based only on your phone model but also on your operator. My proof is that I bought my Nexus One directly from Google and searching for a Bing app in the market from the phone the results will include only Bing for China. If I use the web version of the market there's also an English version of Bing. The website says I cannot install the English version because it is not available from my Operator. I believe this is wrong because this is only a search function that does not require operator support beyond a data connection. It is not related to a revision of the phone specifically for my Operator (Vodafone Australia) because I bought my phone directly from Google.
  • chocks - Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - link

    Filtering on the country and carrier is something that's set up by the application publisher when they submit the application to the market, so it's Microsoft's fault rather than anything Google has done. Possibly they only specified US carriers.
  • alovell83 - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link

    If you are rooted you can use MarketEnabler to fake a carrier code that'll be a carrier that has access to Bing.
  • sprockkets - Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - link

    "You don't get interrupted with a jarring pop-up in the middle of the screen."

    Isn't this something iOS does and up until iOS 4 the option to turn it off wasn't even offered?

    I thought Android did this right to begin with.
  • chocks - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link

    Yes notifications in earlier Android versions appear briefly in the status bar at the top, which can be pulled down to display the full notification. I wouldn't call this a "pop-up in the middle of the screen".
  • alovell83 - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link

    Also, this doesn't require a dismissal, which is half of iOS's problem. Also, I haven't seen a notification when you are in an app, such as a game, or more importantly a movie, which is another big problem on iOS.
  • ltcommanderdata - Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - link

    The article mentions several times how certain features of Android 3.0 should be ported over to smartphones. So does this mean that Android 3.0 will not be coming to smartphones? So does Google intend to maintain separate OS versions for smartphones and tablets or will they be unified at some point?

    And it's interesting that despite the supposed animosity between Apple and Google, Google is using OS X to demo their new App Store, OS, and tablet which of course competes against Apple's ecosystem.
  • mythun.chandra - Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - link

    Quote from the article:
    "I confirmed this with Google; Honeycomb, atleast in the current form, will not be coming to non-tablet devices. But that being said, I was told that features from Honeycomb will definitely trickle down to smartphone OS's and Google actually built Honeycomb with this in mind."

    :)
  • banvetor - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link

    I'm sorry, but this does not tell me much... I was really hoping for Android 3.0 having the usability improvements that apparently it does, but I would very much like it on my smartphone, even because I don't plan on buying a tablet anytime soon.

    Anyway, I was even considering a Nexus S right now with the hope that it would soon be updated to 3.0, and have all the improvements... but I guess I will now wait for Google's confirmation of what's in fact coming to smartphones!

    One final note: it just seems weird that they will "forever" keep smartphones on 2.x and tablets on 3.x... just a thought.
  • ET - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link

    My guess is that they'll merge them in version 4. I don't expect any current (or near future) phone to ever get more than 2.x. But that's just my guess. As you say, it's a good idea to wait for announcements of future phone OS versions, if that's what's holding you from buying a phone. I'll probably buy one anyway and stay behind on 2.2.
  • BigToque - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link

    I think it would be silly to keep the two separate. Both the smartphones and tablets are sufficiently similar.

    I think a good approach is to possibly market two different versions of the same thing and just change how the system is tuned. (Similar to the way Windows works with the desktop/server versions of the OS)
  • wolfman3k5 - Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - link

    This is just the beginning, but Google is branching out into the pharmaceutical and health care industries as well. Google has just acquired the cosmetology division of Procter & Gamble, dubbed "Pharma One", which specializes in hair growth products. This is just as small step in a new direction. Right now Google is only probing, like they always do. I'm bringing this up because I know that Anand has been looking for a decent hair growth product, and now here it is: it's called OneShu by Pharma One which is now owned by Google. From what I have read, OneShu grows thick - long lasting new hair, and there is also an APP now for Android that tracks hair growth.
  • bplewis24 - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link

    lol...
  • Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link

    Why is it such a pita to get offline map browsing. It's like they go out of their way to prevent you from accessing data that is already stored on your own device. On a windows notebook I can get it to work for a while. But eventually it just "decides" on its own to stop working, even though the 2 gigs of map data is still taking up space on my hard drive.
  • xype - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link

    Scout's promise, the next version will be awesome!

    It's ugly and it's chaotic and it's been pushed out the door way too fast way too often. Apart from the geekier crowd (who'll either hate or love it with a passion), it will be interesting to see how Android will develop overall.

    Somehow I have the feeling that Android will be an iOS Killer™ in the same way that a multitude of random MP3 players were an iPod Killer™.
  • bplewis24 - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link

    What planet were you living on before you arrived here yesterday?
  • Griswold - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link

    It must have been Planet of the Fools.
  • B3an - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link

    Android is now the biggest selling phone OS in the world after it recently overtook Symbian, the previous king. It overtook iOS some time ago.
    And it's sales increase is still happening faster than ever, within the next 18 months it will completely dominate iOS.
  • rpmurray - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link

    The Xoom (what a dumb name) looks like just a bigger Android phone. That bezel is huge. The OS is just a glorified phone OS, not a real OS. You can't run real applications like Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop on it. It doesn't have a stylus. It's too big. It's too small. It doesn't have a physical keyboard. It costs too much for what it does. I can buy a netbook for less that does more. This is just a toy.

    Are there any other stupid or asinine comments I forgot to recycle from when the iPad came out, but which the fandroids won't apply to Android tablets because they're "open"?
  • psypher - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link

    Speaking as an iPad owner:

    The iPad runs some great applications, although Office and Photoshop are better than their iOS counterparts (good thing I have computers for those...).

    The touchscreen keyboard on the iPad sucks. If it had Swype like my Droid X, that would be a different story, but it doesn't, so I hate it. I have the BT keyboard for the thing, but carrying it around kind of defeats the purpose in my opinion.

    Size: personal opinion. I don't see myself getting a 7" tablet ever. Roughly 10" feels right to me. Others may prefer smaller, larger, whatever.

    Cost: If you can't afford it, don't buy it. Same as anything else in this world.

    All that said, my 64 gb 3g iPad is going on ebay this week so i can get a Xoom for my wife (unless anyone here wants it for the right price). Do I like "open"? Yes. Am I a Phandroid? No, I just like the product that fits my use scenarios the best and the Xoom seems to do that more so than the iPad this round.

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