Hands on: Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) review
With the tablet edition due out on loads of devices soon, we take a look at its new features
With an Android smartphone, holding down the Home button brings up a list of Recent apps to switch between. With Android 3.0 there’s a task switcher button on the toolbar at the bottom, which brings up a list of recent apps, along with a preview window for each. Again, it’s not game changing, but it does make more use of the larger, higher resolution screens that tablets have.
Tapping the clock at the bottom-right of the screen brings up the time, date, signal strength, notifications (new email and so on) and battery charge for the tablet. Hitting the Settings icon, then lets you choose Airplane mode, configure Wi-Fi, lock the screen orientation, set the screen brightness and turn Notifications on and off. It’s important to be able to quickly reach settings like these and we like the smooth way that they’ve been integrated in Android 3.0.
Where things really have changed is with the apps. The browser has been overhauled and now has tabbed browsing available at the top of the screen in the same way as Google Chrome on a desktop computer. It makes for a much more satisfying browsing experience.
In addition, the browser now supports synching with Google Chrome, so you can share all of your bookmarks across multiple computers and tablets with a single login. We really wish that Google would introduce this feature into its smartphones.
