Android 2.2 (Froyo) vs Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) for Tablets | Android 2.2 and 2.2.1 and 2.2.2 vs Android 3.1 | 3.1 Featured updated
Android 2.2 (Froyo) and Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) are the Mobile Operating Systems of Google Android. The Android storm at the CES 2011 has swiped everything down under. Nearly all new Tablets and smartphones unveiled at Las Vegas were Android based. Android’s newest operating system “Android 3.0 (Honeycomb)” was developed entirely for Tablets. Though Android in late last year released another popular operating system “Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)” with many attractive features, Android 2.2 (Froyo) has not lost its worthiness. There were quite a number of Android 2.2 (Froyo) run tablets and smartphones introduced at Las Vegas.
The main difference between Froyo and Honeycomb is that Froyo is a mobile operating system that supports both tablets and phones while Honeycomb is entirely developed for large screens such as tablets. Froyo is in fact not optimized for large screen devices. We can say Android 2.2 to 2.3 was an upgrade whereas 2.2 to 3.0 (Honeycomb) is a total revamp. Google introduced Honeycomb as the next generation technology.
News Update: Google issued a new update to Honeycomb on 10 May 2011, the new release is Android 3.1
Android 3.1 (Honeycomb)
Android 3.1 is the first major release to Honeycomb, this is an add on to the Android 3.0 features and the UI. It enhances the capabilities of the OS for both users as well as the developers. With the update, the UI is refined to make it more intuitive and efficient. Navigation between the five home screens is made easy, a touch of the home button in system bar will take you to frequently used homes screen. The home screen widget can be customized to add more information. And the recent apps list is expanded to more number of applications. The update also supports more varieties of input devices and USB connected accessories.
In addition to these new features, some of the standard applications are improved in order to optimize the larger screen. The improved applications are Browser, Gallery, Calendar and Enterprise Support. The improved browser supports CSS 3D, animations and CSS fixed positioning, embedded playback of HTML5 video content and plugins that use hardware accelerated tendering. Web pages can now be saved locally for offline viewing with all styling and imaging. Page Zoom performance also improved, giving a better browsing experience.
Android 3.0 (Honeycomb)
Android 3.0 has specifically optimized many applications, like UI, Gmail, multiple tabbed web pages and many others for large screens and of course has added many new applications. The UI gives a total new look with redesigned widgets. With Honeycomb, the tablets do not need physical buttons; the soft buttons appear on the bottom of the screen regardless of which way you orient the device.
The new features include 3D transition, bookmark syncing, private browsing, pinned widgets – create your own widget for individuals in the contact list, video chat using Google Talk and auto-form fill. It has integrated the redesigned YouTube for 3D, tablet optimized eBooks, Google Map 5.0 with 3D interaction, wallpapers and many of the updated Android phone applications. The home screen can be customized and scrollable.
Android fully optimized the large screen to provide smooth multitasking experience with multiple user panels that appear side by side. The redesigned Gmail displays the folders, contacts and messages side by side in columns. Also with the new Gmail application, you can open more messages from the inbox in new panes while keeping you active view intact on the screen. The new panes will appear side by side.
Google also proudly boasts about the millions of books to go with Google eBooks, currently it’s having 3 million eBooks. The eBook widget on the home screen gives you access to scroll through the list of bookmarks. Going by the demonstration in the promo video, it’s going to be fantastic for book lovers to enjoy the reading on a bigger screen while on the move.
Android 3.0 Preview
Features of Android 2.2 (Froyo)
Integration of Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine into the Browser application
Advanced Microsoft Exchange support
Wi-Fi hotspot functionality
Voice dialling and contact sharing over Bluetooth
Support for file upload fields in the Browser application
Animated GIFs supported in browser.
Adobe Flash 10.1 supported
Support for extra high DPI screens
Android 2.2 (Froyo) Official Video
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Difference between Android 2.2 (Froyo) and 3.0 (Honeycomb) 1. Froyo is generic mobile operating system while Honeycomb was exclusively developed for large screens like tablets. 2. Honeycomb applications are redesigned to optimize the large screen. 3. Following features are different in Honeycomb: – tablet optimized Gmail; can view multiple messages side by side – chat face to face using Google talk without third party tool – tablet optimized eBooks – 3D transition – bookmark syncing – private browsing – pinned widgets – for individuals in the contact list, – auto-form fill – browser support multiple tabs – scrollable home screen – no physical button required in tablet
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Honeycomb with enriched multimedia experience, improved multitasking, full browsing experience, new UI and tablet optimized applications, has opened up a new path for more developments to come.
HoneyComb Event Video
Android 3.1 New Features and Improvements (Add on to Features in Android 3.0)
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API Level: 12 Release: 10 May 2011
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| New Features
1. Refined UI – Launcher animation optimized for faster, smoother transition to/from app list – Adjustments in color, positioning and text – Audible feedback for improved accessibility – Customizable touch-hold interval – Navigation to/from five home screens made easy. Touching the home button in system bar will return you to most frequently used home screen. – Improved view of internal storage used by apps 2. Support for more varieties of input devices such as keyboards, mouse, trackballs, game controllers and accessories such as digital cameras musical instrument, kiosks and card readers. – Any type of external keyboards, mouse and trackballs can be connected – Most of the PC joysticks, game controllers and game pads can be connected except for some proprietary controllers – More than one device can be attached simultaneously via USB and/or Blutooth HID – No configuration or drivers required – Support for USB accessories as host to launch related applications, if application not available the accessories can give the URL to download the application. – Users can interact with application to control the accessories. 3. Recent Apps list is expandable to include larger number of apps. The list will have all the apps in use and recently used apps. 4. Customizable Home screen – Re-sizable home screen widgets. widgets can be expanded in both vertically and horizontally. – Updated home screen widget for Email app gives quick access to emails 5. New high performance Wi-Fi lock added for uninterrupted connectivity even when the device screen is off. This will be useful for streaming long duration music, video and voice services. – HTTP proxy for each individual Wi-Fi access point can be configured. This will be used by the browser when communicating with the networks. Other Apps also may use this. – Configuration is made easy by touch-hold of the access point in the setting – Back up and restore the user defined IP and proxy setting – Support for Preferred Network Offload (PNO), which works in the background and conserves battery power in case where Wi-Fi connectivity needed for longer time. Improvements to Standard Applications 6. Improved Browser app – new features added and UI improved – Quick Controls UI is extended and redesigned. Users can use it to view thumbnails of open tabs, to close the active tabs, access overflow menu for instant access to settings and many other. – Supports CSS 3D, animations, and CSS fixed positioning to all sites. – Supports embedded playback of HTML5 video content – Save the webpage locally for offline viewing with all styling and imaging – Improved auto login UI let users quickly sign in to Google sites and manage access when multiple users sharing the same device – Support for plugins that use hardware accelerated rendering – Page Zoom performance improved 7. Gallery apps improved to support Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP). – Users can connect external cameras over USB and import pictures to Gallery with one touch – The imported pictures are copied to local storages and it will show the balance space available. 8. Calender grids are made larger for better readability and accurate targeting – Controls in data picker are redesigned – Calender list controls can be hidden to create larger viewing area for grids 9. Contacts app allows full text search making it quicker to locate contacts and the results are shown from all the fields stored in the contact. 10. Email app improved – When replying or forwarding HTML message the improved Email app sends both plain text and HTML bodies as multi-part mime message. – Folder prefixes for IMAP accounts are made easier to define and manage – Prefetches emails from server only when the device is connected to a Wi-Fi access point. This is done to conserve battery power and minimize data usage – Improved home screen widget gives quick access to emails and users can cycle through email labels with the touch of the Email icon at the top of the widget 11. Improved Enterprise support – Administrators can use the configurable HTTP proxy for each Wi-Fi access point – Allows encrypted storage card device policy with emulated storage cards and encrypted primary storage
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| Compatible Devices:
Android Honeycomb Tablets, Google TV |
Android 3.0 Honeycomb Features
| Android 3.0 (Honeycomb)
API Level 11 |
| New User Features
1. New UI – holographic UI newly designed for large screen displays with content focused interaction, the UI is backward compatible, applications designed for earlier versions can be used with new UI. 2. Refined multitasking 3. Rich notification, no more popups 4. System bar at the bottom of the screen for system status, notification and it accomodates navigation buttons, as like in Google Chrome. 5. Customizable homescreen (5 homescreens) and dynamic widgets for 3D experience 6. Action bar for application control for all applications 7. Redesigned keyboard for larger screen, keys are reshaped and repositioned and new keys added such as Tab key. button in system bar to switch between text/voice input mode 8. Improvement to text selection, copy and paste; very close to what we do in computer. 9. Buil in support for Media/Picture Transfer Protocol – you can instantly sync media files through USB cable. 10. Connect full keyboard over USB or Bluetooth 11. Improved Wi-Fi connectivity 12. New support for Bluetooth tethering – you can connect more types of devices 13. Improved browser for efficient browsing and better browsing experience using the large screen – some of the new features are: – multiple tabbed browsing instead of windows, – incognito mode for anonymous browsing. – single unified view for Bookmarks and History. – multi-touch support to JavaScript and plugins – improved zoom and viewport model, overflow scrolling, support for fixed positioning 14. Redesigned camera application for larger screen – quick access to exposure, focus, flash, zoom, etc. – built-in support for time- lapse video recording – gallery application for full screen mode viewing and easy access to thumbnails 15. Redesigned contacts applications features for larger screen – new two-pane UI for contacts applications – improved formatting for international phone numbers based on home country – contact information view in card like format for easy reading and editing 16. Redesigned Email appliations – two-pane UI for viewing and organizing mails – sync mail attachments for later viewing – track emails using email widgets in the homescreen |
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New Developer Features 1. New UI Framework – to fragment and combine activities in different ways to create richer and more interactive applications 2. Redesigned UI Widgets for larger screen and new holographic UI theme – developers can quickly add new types of content to relevant applications and can interact with users in new ways – new types of widgets included such as 3D stack, search box, date/time picker, number picker, calendar, popup menu 3. Action Bar at the top of the screen can be customized by developers according to application 4. A new builder class to create notifications that include large and small icons, title, a priority flag, and any properties already available in previous versions 5. Developers can use mulitiselect, clipboard and drag and drop features to offer users more enjoyable gaming experience 6. Performance improvement to 2D and 3D graphics – new animation framework – new hardware accelerated OpenGL renderer to improve the performance of 2D graphics based applications – Renderscript 3D graphics engine for accelerated graphics operations and create high performance 3D effects in applications. 7. Support for multicore processor architectures – support symmetric mulitprocessing in multicore environments, even an application designed for single core environment will enjoy the performance boost. 8. HTTP Live streaming – media framwork supports most of the HTTP Live streaming specification. 9. Pluggable DRM framework – for applications to manage protected content, Android 3.0 offers unified API for simplified management of protected contents. 10. Built-in support for MTP/PTP over USB 11. API support for Bluetooth A2DP and HSP profiles For Enterprises Device administration applications can include new types of policies, such as policies for encrypted storage, password expiration, password history, and requirement of complex characters for passwords. |
Android 2.2 Features
| Android 2.2 (FroYo)
API Level 8 |
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User Features: 1. Tips Widget – the new tips widget at the home screen provide support to users to configure home screen and add new widgets. 2. Exchange Calendars are now supported in the Calendar application. 3. Easy set up and sync an Exchange account, you just have to enter your user-name and password. 4. In composing an email, users can now auto-complete recipient names from the directory with the global address list look up feature. 5. Multiple language recognition simultaneously. 6. Onscreen buttons give easy access to UI to control camera features such as zoom, focus, flash, etc. 7. USB tethering and Wi-Fi hotspot (your phone works as a wireless broadband router. 8. Enhance browser performance using Chrome V8 engine, which enhance faster loading of pages, more than 3, 4 times compared to Android 2.1 9. Better memory management, you can experience smooth multi tasking even on memory constrained devices. 10. New media framework supports local file playback and HTTP progressive streaming. 11. Support applications over Bluetooth such as voice dialling, share contacts with other phones, Bluetooth enabled car kits and headsets. . |
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For Network Providers 1. Improved security with numeric pin or alpha-numeric password options to unlock device. 2. Remote Wipe – remotely reset the device to factory defaults to secure data in case device is lost or stolen. . For Developers 1. Applications can now request installation on the shared external storage (such as an SD card). 2. Apps can utilize Android Cloud to Device Messaging to enable mobile alert, send to phone, and two-way push sync functionality. 3. New bug reporting feature for Android Market apps enables developers to receive crash and freeze reports from their users. 4. Provides new APIs for audio focus, routing audio to SCO, and auto-scan of files to media database. Also provides APIs to let applications detect completion of sound loading and auto-pause and auto-resume audio playback. 5. Camera now supports portrait orientation, zoom controls, access to exposure data, and a thumbnail utility. A new camcorder profile enables apps to determine device hardware capabilities. 6. New APIs for OpenGL ES 2.0, working with YUV image format, and ETC1 for texture compression. 7. New “car mode” and “night mode” controls and configurations allow applications to adjust their UI for these situations. 8. A scale gesture detector API provides improved definition of multi-touch events. 9. Tab widget at the bottom of the screen can be customized by applications. . |