Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) review

Web browsing

We love the look of new web browser, which mimics the look and feel of the desktop edition of Chrome, with similar tabs for multi-tab browsing, as well as the buttons for bookmarks, back and forwards. It can even be set up to be synced with the Desktop Chrome, although currently only bookmarks are supported, rather than passwords and form data.

It’s also frustrating that there’s no home button directly on the browser screen. Instead, you have to select Bookmarks and hit the Home button from there. We don’t understand why this can’t be moved to a more convenient place.

Browsing is slick and smooth, from what we’ve seen and the new browser seems to do a better job of rendering pages than the smartphone edition. This is particularly true when Flash is involved. Using the smartphone edition, we found that Flash objects would often obscure other parts of the page, such a website menus; with Android 3.0 this problem has gone and Flash objects behave properly.

That’s not to say that they don’t slow down browsing at times. For that reason, we recommend setting Plug-ins to load on demand, so that you can choose when you want to view Flash content and when you want faster browsing.

Most web pages load correctly, but the browser does make some rendering errors, such as overlapping some text. These errors are few and far between, and tend to occur on very busy websites, such as Expedia.

Email and Gmail

Both the Email and Gmail apps have had an overhaul, too. In landscape mode they present a list of emails on the left, and the contents of an email in the preview window. It makes it quicker to browse through email and makes full use of higher-resolution screens. We like the fact that the buttons to move between emails are called Newer and Older, as it makes it clearer what they do.

In Portrait mode, the list of emails disappears, but tapping the side of the screen brings it back. It’s useful to be able to do this, but we feel that the applications work better in landscape mode.

Rather than relying on sub-menus, there are dedicated always-visible buttons to manage your email, including delete, new mail, move and reply.

Calendar

The new calendar makes good use of the larger screen resolution. In all, but Month view, you get a thumbnail calendar, allowing you to quickly skip to a particular date or week. Google has also implemented multi-touch into it: zooming in or out shows more or less time on-screen, allowing you to quickly get an overview of a week or day, then zoom into view the detail.