First Impressions Using Android Honeycomb, Google’s iPad Rival

This morning Google held an event to showcase Android Honeycomb, the new version of the mobile OS that is focused on tablets. There wasn’t much news around the OS — we’ve seen it previewed in a few demos — but the team did show off some of Honeycomb’s slickest features, like widgets and an improved 3D rendering engine.

But what about actually using the tablet OS? For all the whiz-bang previews we’ve seen, very few people have actually written about what it’s like to use these tablets. Unfortunately today’s event wasn’t the ideal place to do a full hands-on, either — there were dozens of reporters and only four tablets (most people got to play with one for maybe five minutes). But I wanted my fill of Honeycomb, so I stuck around til the crowd finally died down, put on my blinders, and took the Motorola Xoom for a 20+ minute spin. Apologies to the guy waiting behind me — I honestly didn’t realize you were there.

Here are some of the features and apps that stood out — be sure to check out the video below for some of these in action.

The Action Bar

One of the most drastic changes is the move from dedicated hardware buttons to access Menu options to the ‘Action Bar’ — a UI element at the top of the screen with options that change depending on whatever application you’re using.

If you’re in the tablet’s browser (which is based on Google Chrome) then this is where you’ll find your open tabs. If you’re in the movie editing app, it’s where you’ll find buttons to import a new clip — but if you hold your finger down on a section of a clip then the Action Bar will populate with options to add a transition or text overlay. In other words, the Action Bar changes dynamically based on what you’re doing in an application.

Most applications also include a Settings button in the far righthand side of the Action Bar, though this is only a convention and not a rule.

In practice the system seems to work well, and you’ll find that you instinctively look toward the Action Bar whenever you want to find an application option or setting that isn’t part of the main UI. Of course, developers are in complete control over what appears in the Action Bar so there could be some consistency issues. But at least people will actually be able to find these options, which is more than can be said about the options hidden behind the ‘Menu’ button on current versions of Android (which many people never hit).

Browser

Kicks the pants off of the iPad’s browser. Tabs are great, and the fact that the tablet browser syncs with your desktop version of Google Chrome is very nice. Scrolling felt smooth. And there’s Incognito Mode.

Gmail

We’ve seen it showcased a few times now, but Gmail for Honeycomb is awesome — it’s like the iPad-optimized web version of Gmail, but without the slight lag you still find on browser apps. I want it badly.

Copy And Paste

I’ve never cared about copy & paste nearly as much as the people who spend their time complaining about its implementation on the web. But I know you’re out there, so here’s some good news: it’s works well on Honeycomb.

If you’ve used Android Gingerbread you’re already familiar with the orange arrows that appear when you go to highlight text. These work pretty well, but there’s one problem: there’s no button to choose what you want to do with that text (the solution is to simply tap the highlighted text, which copies it to the clipboard, but some sort of menu overlay would be nice).

Things are much better in Honeycomb: when you highlight text, the Action Bar changes from its current options to let you Cut, Copy, Paste, or Select All. Is it exciting? Not at all. But it’s a good example of how the Action Bar changes depending on what you’re doing, and I’m sure some of you are going to be over the moon about this.

Android Market

The UI of Android Market has been revamped for the tablet. I think it’s pretty ugly: the ‘Android Green’ striped lines feel almost like placeholder graphics and it doesn’t look nearly as attractive as iOS’s App Store. But it gets the job done.

Movie Studio

It hasn’t gotten much press, but there’s a new application included as part of the Honeycomb suite of Google applications: Movie Studio. I didn’t spend too much time in this, but it includes the features you’d expect: transitions between clips, text overlays, and so on. The UI isn’t what you’d call pretty and it think it may leave some people scratching their heads, but it’s a nice app to have.

Ease of Use

One of my biggest questions about Android tablet concerns usability. I believe that the iPad has been a hit in part because it is a simpler alternative to normal desktop operating systems, while still providing plenty of functionality for people who primarily surf the web, email, and watch videos. Many people buy iPads not just because they like the form factor, but because they want a computer that won’t prompt them with endless security alerts, software updates, and confusing installation processes.

Android Honeycomb is decidedly more complex than the iPad. Instead of a single hardware button used to jump back to the home screen, as there is on iOS, Honeycomb uses a soft button in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. And maybe it’s just me, but the home button doesn’t even look that much like a home button (it could pass as an ‘up’ arrow, especially given the fact that the adjacent Back button is an arrow pointing left).

And some of Honeycomb’s improvements over iOS could also be considered possible stumbling blocks. If you long-press the desktop, you’ll bring up the widget/wallpaper selector, which some people will undoubtedly activate accidentally (and promptly panic). The third button in the bottom left corner lets you jump between recently used applications — a feature that I’ll love, but could confuse people who aren’t sure what’s going on.

But overall the OS is pretty easy to get the hang of. I’d still feel more comfortable handing an iPad to my mother (who absolutely loves hers, for what it’s worth), but the learning curve with Honeycomb isn’t very steep.

And For Those Who Like A Bit More Power…

If you’re comfortable doing more on your computer than email and browsing the web — and have ever felt a little restrained using an iPad — then Honeycomb may feel like a breath of fresh air.

Your home screen is no longer simply a grid of your favorite applications — it’s a dashboard populated with content, like your recent emails, favorite chat buddies, weather, to-do list, and more. Widgets aren’t anything new for Android, but they’ve always been cumbersome on mobile devices because screen real estate is so limited (I’ve found myself debating between keeping my Calendar widget or giving myself an extra row of apps on my phone’s home screen).

On Honeycomb this is much less of an issue. Widgets are the sort of thing that prove their worth over time (as opposed to during a 20 minute demo), but my initial hunch is that people will love them.

Honeycomb also features a new notification system that reminds me of Growl on Mac OS X. New updates slide into view in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, and you don’t have to squint to see them the way you do on Android phones. Again, very nice.

This is a big advantage for Android now, but I’ll be surprised if the next version of iOS doesn’t include widgets and notifications. Then again, I was surprised that the last version didn’t include them, so who knows.

The Xoom Hardware

The first Honeycomb tablet is the Motorola Xoom, which will probably ship in the next month (the release date hasn’t been announced yet). From a hardware perspective the tablet feels fine. It’s not great — it feels a little too heavy for its size, and I wish the screen resolution were higher — but it’s good enough for people itching to get their hands on an Android tablet.

And if you don’t like the Xoom there will be plenty of other choices in the coming months. Judging Honeycomb based on the Xoom would be like judging Android based on the G1 (okay, okay — maybe the HTC Hero).

Outlook

During the last Apple earnings call, Apple COO Tim Cook dismissed existing Android tablets as “bizarre“. And rightly so — they took an OS that was designed with mobile phones in mind, scaled them up to larger screens, and told consumers they were good to go. The Galaxy Tab was supposedly selling anyway, until it was revealed that previously released figures were misleading and that actual sales were quite small. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone who actually used one.

But Honeycomb changes all that. It’s a solid competitor to iOS — better, even, in some ways. I won’t be at all surprised if we see Honeycomb explode on tablets the way Android has exploded on mobile handsets since the original Droid launched in November 2009. Yes, carriers and OEMs will undoubtedly add their own skins and bundled applications, but provided they don’t do anything too outrageous to the user experience, Honeycomb feels like a winner.

Mass Effect 2 PS3 - Lost in Translation Mass Effect 2 PS3 - Lost in Translation

Anyone would find it hard not to love the intergalactic awesomeness Canadian developers Bioware have served up with their Mass Effect franchise, and I am no different. I lapped the original Mass Effect up, even with its underwhelming gameplay (IMO) and the infuriating Mako, simply because of its wonderfully crafted setting, characters and story.

Mass Effect 2 was more of a polishing act though. While the story in the second game didn’t hold a candle to the original’s (second parts of trilogies never do, do they?), the characters got better and most importantly, gameplay was much more refined which made it one of the very best games of last year.

PS3-only gamers didn't know what they were missing until it hit them

So when Mass Effect 2 was announced as coming to the Playstation 3, I felt happy for PS3 gamers. “Now everyone gets a piece of that delicious cake,” is what I thought. It wasn’t something I’d go and pick up on day one though, not until it was announced it’d be running on theMass Effect 3 engine. I was tempted - one more playthrough of a great game and a 10-month early preview for the next one? Where do I sign up? And sign up I did - I tookMass Effect 2 PS3 for a spin, so read on to find out how my test drive went.

The first thing I noticed was how long the install was. Even though PS3 owners really ought to be used to mandatory installs by now, one that easily takes more than half an hour is abnormal. I would still find it acceptable if it had facilitated shorter load times though, but I'll get to that later.

Morrigan disappr- oh wait, wrong game

Mass Effect 2 on the Xbox 360 and PC gave gamers the option to import their saved games from Mass Effect. The PS3 version can’t, because Microsoft published the first game and therefore haven’t, and never will, release it for the PS3. Bioware have come up with a workaround though, in the form of an interactive comic that will allow gamers to catch up on the happenings in the originalMass Effect and make all the important choices that gamers playing the game on the 360 and PC had to make, thereby effectively creating their own save file. However, there’s a catch – as part of EA’s current program to encourage gamers to buy new games instead of pre-owned, players have to input a one-use code on the Playstation Store and then download the comic. So after an install that took more than half an hour, I was hit with a 676mb download. Ugh.

The comic itself is quite decent. While it’s impossible to pack the authentic experience of an entire game into a 20-minute comic, it does include all the important choices of the first game and provides PS3-only gamers a barely adequate introduction to the series, which is about all you can expect really.

Notion Ink Adam wont reach some pre-order customers until February 14

‘Delayed’ is probably the word that comes to everyone’s mind at the mention of Adam. For those who are not annoyed enough to ignore the reasons, the tablet may just be too popular for its own good. The official Notion Ink blog has ruefully stated that some customers will have to wait until February 14 before laying hands on the Adam.
The delay will reportedly affect a little over 5% of the pre-order customers. The cause for delay this time around is cited as the accidental damage of the touchscreen shipment. This blog post explains that the folks at Sintek will be working through the Chinese New Year week to make up for the lost units.
Although it’s a part of the shipment which was damaged as opposed to the whole, all orders have been pulled back since the defective and working screens cannot be reckoned manually. Disappointing, we know. Well, at least Valentine’s Day can be expected to play out smoothly for pre-order customers.

Mercedes re-introduces sedan Maybach in India

German premium carmaker Mercedes Benz on Tuesday re-introduced its super premium sedan Maybach in India and would be priced upto Rs 5.10 crore (ex-showroom Delhi). The company has launched two variants of the car -- 57 S and 62 -- with a price tag of Rs 4.85 crore and Rs 5.10 crore respectively.

"This car is only for luxury segment. Designed with meticulous attention to detail and kitted out of 21st century automotive technology, the cars are writing the next chapter in the history," Mercedes Benz India managing director and CEO Peter Hanger told reporters in New Delhi.

While the 5980 CC Maybach 57 S can touch a maximum speed of 275 km, the 5513 CC Maybach 62 can run 250 km per hour.

Google, Twitter Offer Egyptians Option to Tweet By Voicemail

Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Egyptians, blocked from the Internet, are being offered a way by Google Inc. and Twitter to “tweet” by using a voice connection.

As opposition groups prepare to march in Cairo today, engineers at Google, Twitter and SayNow, a company Google acquired last week, are making it possible for Egyptians to stay connected. The service includes leaving a voicemail on an international phone numbers listed on Google’s official blog, which is instantly turned into a tweet.

“Like many people we’ve been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and thinking of what we could do to help people on the ground,” Ujjwal Singh, co-founder of SayNow, and AbdelKarim Mardini, Google product manager for the Middle East and North Africa, wrote on the blog. “Over the weekend, we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service.”

The Google-Twitter service is just the latest option being made available to Egyptians to skirt the closure of the Internet. Web traffic volumes in Egypt slumped in a “coordinated fashion” shortly after midnight on Jan. 28 after demonstrators took to the streets demanding the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, according to Internet security firm Arbor Networks.

Opposition groups have urged Egyptians back onto the streets to demand the resignation of 82-year-old Mubarak. The organizers, backed by former United Nations nuclear official Mohamed ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood, aim to hold a 1- million-person march in the capital today.

Dial-Ups

More than 90 percent of Egypt’s Internet networks were down as of late yesterday, the Geneva-based nonprofit Internet Society said. The group couldn’t immediately provide a status report on Internet access today.

Old-fashioned dial-up connections to the Internet are another option Egyptians have been offered. At least 30 different dial-up services are being offered to circumvent the shutdown, Paris-based French Data Network, a group founded in 1992 to make data accessible, said yesterday. The group opened up one such “small window” on the Internet network to help Egyptians access the Web.

“This is definitely an open attack from a state against the Internet,” the group said in a statement on its Web site. “FDN has decided to open a small window on the network.”

FDN is giving them access on international lines through a dial-in number and entry codes.

“The infrastructure is already in place,” said Benjamin Bayart, the head of the association, in an interview. “As long as they have an international phone line, people can dial in.”

Mobile-phone voice services, run by local units of Vodafone Group Plc and France Telecom SA, were restored on Jan. 29, after the government ordered the companies to temporarily suspend operations.

Egypt has one of the most advanced telecommunications markets in the Middle East and Africa. About 95 percent of Egyptians, or 74.9 million subscribers, are clients of a mobile- phone network, according to analysts at Cairo-based AlembicHC.

--Editors: Vidya Root, Steve Rhinds

To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Browning in London jbrowning9@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Vidya Root at vroot@bloomberg.net.

Zebronics strengthens its hold on Indian markets with ZebTouch touch panel mouse

Touch-sensitive devices seem to be fast gaining momentum as far as popularity is concerned. Affecting all parts of the globe, Zebronics now brings these offerings to Indian soil dubbed as the ZebTouch touch panel mouse. According to the company, the device is observed to be the first-of-its-kind innovation in the country.
The newly announced peripheral bears a space-age appearance and resembles something quite out of the ordinary. It has no scroll wheel or click buttons on the glossy surface. Offering a comfortable tactile feel, owners can simply control the actions by sweeping their fingers over the front of the device. The trendy PC accessory sports a dark noir shade with markings on the surface.

Rajesh Doshi, Director, Zebronics said, “Our operations focus for the year would be to make the user experience with the Zebronics brand a pleasant one, not just with the product but throughout its ownership life-cycle. With a 100 conveniently located service outlets, I believe we would have one of the most widespread service networks in our category by the end of the year.”

He further added, “In terms of volumes we aim to grow by about 30 per cent. To facilitate this we plan to expand our retail reach to cover more geographies and also partner organized retailers with presence in high-footfall market areas.”
The company has further revealed that it will enhance its service network to reach around 100 centers strewn all across the country this year. They will feature both company-owned as well as Authorised Service Partner (ASP) models. At the Compass 2011 Expo, Zebronics also plans to reveal its new category of product line namely the power strip. The Zebronics Platinum series is touted to be India’s premier premium brand and is slated to include 100% copper as well as other quality features.
As the company suggests, it looks towards offering its customers in India premium value products tagged with prices that won’t really eat right through their pockets.

New Samsung Galaxy S 2 teaser launched

For those of you who’ve been waiting for a sneak peek at the upcoming Galaxy S phone from Samsung, you’re in for a treat. Samsung has just released a new teaser for the upcoming Galaxy S 2, and boy it sure looks slim. Besides a glimpse of what the device looks like, we can’t really tell much from the video, except that it’s a “secret” that’s meant to be shared. Towards the end of the video we get a side profile view that should have Galaxy S fanboys excited for this dual-core processor, AMOLED Plus toting phone. February 13 is the date that it will be announced at the Mobile World Congress, so keep your ears and eyes peeled. Hit the break to check out the Galaxy S 2 trailer.