By In case your bubble of hope was so big that previous dispelling of Honeycomb coming to smartphones couldn’t burst it, the fact was once again confirmed at yesterday’s Android 3.0 event. All hope isn’t lost, though, as Google spokesperson Andrew Kovacs stated that certain features of Honeycomb will, over time, make their way to Android phones.
One such feature we might hope to see on future iterations of Android’s handset OS? Data encryption. The feature lacking from Android on smartphones has created some hesitation in adoption from enterprise users, but it has been discovered Honeycomb on tablets features system-wide, password-protected encryption of all of your stored data. Apparently encryption takes about an hour to complete, but details on which standard (or standards) are being used remain scant.
That’s fine, personally I’m not a huge fan of the Honeycomb UI anyway. I’m rather relieved to know it’s not coming to Android phones. :^)
@Warren ….What is this I don’t even….
Wait, so where will the Android for phones go? Is Gingerbread a last version? Or the phones will “skip” the Honeycomb and eventually be moved to Ice Cream?
ouch…lol i’m all for freedom of speech but that one hurt xD
Well, first, honeycomb is said to be the future of android in an interview with Google’s Matias Duarte. And second honeycomb will reach Mobiles eventually, they wouldn’t have called it Android if it wasn’t going to.
@GRRemlin I expect there will be two separate builds of android, one for tablets and one for phones. They’ll probably be the same under the hood just with different uis.
It’ll probably be similar to Honeycomb, but called something different. Honeycomb is definitely it’s own OS as a lot of the UI and app tweaks couldn’t be implemented on a phone. I’m sure Google is working on an improved UI version, but it’s gotta keep the two separate so the tabs can be advertised as a “tablet-designed UI.”
Im not sure why people are taking this as bad news . Honeycomb is optimized entirely for tablets . Tablets should be grateful , phones however shouldnt be hateful ( + 1 ? ) The UI for example .. its amazing and all , i just dont see it on a phone !
+1 moses92 the UI is clearly tablet… can anyone REALLY imagine that a any of the curent phones out there? no, they would not have worked so hard on getting the UI to work well on phones just to have it totally change in a couple months
jkOnTheRun reported the exact oposite of this. Kevin qualified it that it might be down the road quite a bit as they are optimizing for tablets full time, the infrastructure is there and they hope to bring it to phones down the road. What gives then?
It don’t really matter to me as long as they keep updating the mobile os i’m fine with that. honeycomb is for tablets and tablets only… Make sense
I am glad they won’t try. I think it’s best to keep phone and tablet UI different in an effort to best utilize each devices specific abilities. IMHO, having a tablet UI hampered by a phone one or vice versa would limit imagination for both. But obviously, both can gain benefits from each other. It just seems short sighted to share a UI for a screen size of such different size and proportions as tablets and phones when that screen size is so pivotal to the success of its ability to be used successfully by a user.
I think this title is misleading. Matias Durate and others have said that Honeycomb “is the future of Android”. Will the UI be exactly the same? No of course not. Some of the tablet UI arrangements are clearly not appropriate for smaller screens. Will the core features of Honeycomb (HW acceleration, Renderscript, Video Chat, etc) come to smartphones? I think without a doubt.
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The only question at this point is: When?
^ I think within 3 months.
Google is fuckin ass backwards. They go in a direction than they shift direction.
UPDATE from Google courtesy of BGR: “The version of Honeycomb we’ve shown is optimized for tablet form factors. All of the UI changes are the future of Android. Yesterday’s event focused on tablet form factors, which is where you’ll first see Honeycomb.”
The sky is falling! Aahhhhhhhhhh
@Bobert this has nothing to do with google, just shitty “reporting”.
UPDATE: It turns out there may have been a bit of confusion surrounding Kovacs’ comments at the Google event. Google reached out to clarify, supplying BGR with the following statement: “The version of Honeycomb we’ve shown is optimized for tablet form factors. All of the UI changes are the future of Android. Yesterday’s event focused on tablet form factors, which is where you’ll first see Honeycomb.”
I would think the encryption feature would make it to smartphones if they wanna get Android to give RIM a run for its money in corporate America.
Lol i like how everyone here that pretends that they don’t want honeycomb on their phones yet deep inside are really dissappointed and probably posted here in the past how cool honeycomb is and how they can’t wait to get it on their phones. Bunch of hypocrites.
Update this article already! People are going to link to this missinformation and quote it as fact
The addition of system-wide data encryption is great news. This missing feature has been keeping Android from being used at our company of 135k employees. Once this encryption makes its way to a phone release, I’ll finally have access to email and calendar on my phone (or future Android tablet) and can ditch my iPad.