REVIEW: Android 3.0 Honeycomb – Does it hit all the sweet spots?

The most notable difference between Honeycomb, and any other version of Android, is the

user interface. It’s been completely revamped to suit larger displays, and just looks

plain sexy. The holographic UI is quite a step above almost anything we’ve ever seen

on a tablet, and from an aesthetics point of view, can easily challenge any tablet on

the market today.

Honeycomb offers the familiar five homescreen panels that you can customize with

applications and widgets, only this time around, it’s done with style. The panels are

all done up in 3D, and the entire UI is smooth as butter – at least on the Motorola

Xoom, which has the NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processors to thank for its graphics

prowess. The graphical enhancements throughout Honeycomb are stunning, and make a truly

immersive experience when using the tablet. Honeycomb has a slight learning curve, but

just like Android phones, once you get it, you get it. Still, that may not be simple

enough for some people.

In contrast, iOS is so painfully easy to use, that anyone could pick it up and get

going. However, it seems as if Apple is so concerned about making their OS stupid-proof

that it lacks certain functionality. Android 3.0 oozes power at the OS level, and iOS

leaves it to the applications to make it powerful. This isn’t a bad thing, but more

functionality within the OS itself makes for a more complex layout of how you use it.