Google has made some stalwart efforts when it comes to breaking into the tablet scene. Here, of course, we mean “stalwart” as in the sort of efforts that the French Resistance made against Germany during World War II; yes, they did a little bit, and the efforts are certainly worth admiring, but it’s not nearly enough. However, Google’s upcoming Honeycomb may just change the game.
To get a better idea of the vision for Honeycomb, one of the best sources is an interview with Matias Duarte, lead designer of the Honeycomb project. While Duarate had plenty to talk about, one of the most crucial points is that the OS isn’t designed just to open up tablets — it’s designed for any number of additional, unnamed mobile platforms. “Tablet was the focus,” stated Duarte, “but the changes we did also free [the OS] up to be more flexible for other context as well. It’s about really eliminating all the barriers to all the different kinds of form factors that people might want to interact with.”
Duarte cited three major areas for development: building the OS for compatibility with larger devices, improving the overall computing capabilities, and making the OS more usable. Duarte hasn’t stated that these items have been completed, but rather that “our work is far from done in any of those [categories].”
One of the ways Honeycomb’s horizons are being expanded is a complete freedom from hardware button reliance, meaning that all the actions will be attached to the screen interface. To Duarte, this signifies an opportunity to attach the platform to any number of devices, including some that “might look more like a laptop,” or even “some of them might not even have soft buttons.”
Duarte’s background is with the Palm team, where he developed the web operating system. He has been working with Google for just over a year now.
