Google has unveiled a cloud service to update Android devices with new apps from a PC web browser and has demonstrated the new Android Honeycomb operating system for tablets in a news conference at its headquarters in Silicon Valley.
Andy Rubin (pictured), who leads Android’s development, introduced the event and told us there would be a number of new features unveiled, including improvements in the Android Market and cloud services supporting Android. The news as it was unveiled is after the jump.
10.05am Pacific time (1805 GMT) – Google begins by giving an overview of the Honeycomb interface.There are lots of widgets – a stack widget lets you flick through books, photos and videos. Widgets for email and calendar can be scrolled through independently using multi-touch screens.
Notifications with a picture and message pop up from a status bar along the bottom of the screen, which contains much more information than the status bar at the top of an Android smartphone screen.
Application fragments – this is Google’s term for features such as sliding panes in Gmail for seeing different views of your Inbox and messages. Messages can also be picked up and dragged into a folder – something we’re used to doing with a mouse in Windows, but not using touch on a smartphone or tablet.
Performance - has been optimised for 2D and 3D graphics, enabling swift zooming in and out of applications. A new graphics engine called Renderscript allows sophisticated apps such as a YouTube video wall and a carousel of books in Android’s bookstore.
Maps – dynamic rendering has been enabled to allow instant rotation and tilting of views.
Google Body - a map of the human anatomy with layers for the skeleton, muscles etc is shown as another example of the impressive 3D rendering.
Media capabilities - a new camera app has a redesigned user interface and Google Talk has a new interface for video chat, which combines pictures with instant-messaging chat windows.
10.25am News Corporation is unveiling The Daily for the iPad today, but Google appears to be striking back with a demo from CNN of an app specifically designed for Honeycomb. The design is impressive and video and even live pictures are built in.
10.35am Cloud services improvements – changes to Android Market to help discovery and installation are coming. The new webstore is unveiled, where users can go to their browsers on a PC and purchase and install this way, instead of using the client on their smartphones.
It’s obviously a much larger interface so it looks a lot easier to browse and allows bigger display banners to promote apps.
Google demonstrates buying and downloading an app – after the purchase takes place, a notification appears on your phone and the app can be seen seamlessly downloading onto the phone. Buyer currency support is coming – developers can add specific prices for different currencies. Support for in-app purchases is also coming – so new levels in a game can be sold, for example.
For its big finish, Google holds a video chat with Grammy-nominated Cee-Lo.
10.55am - The news conference is over and we’re invited to see further demos of Honeycomb and the Android Market’s capabilities in the back.
There were some welcome improvements here to the Android Market, in particular the browser access to it, but Google fell short of announcing full syncing through a web app of users’ different Android devices – something it previewed at its developer conference last year. Update Google’s blog post does mention the My Market Account feature for managing apps between devices and the Android Market website is now live.
