Yesterday Google held a conference from their Californian headquarters officially unveiling their new Android 3.0 OS – Honeycomb, their first OS designed with tablets in mind. The buzz (gettit) ahead of the event has been expectant as developers and consumers both look for the right OS to allow tablet technology to live up to its potential. So did we get the OS we have been waiting for??

Homescreen

The obvious starting point is to discuss the homescreen and how this differs from the previous incarnations of the Android OS. Well, there is no denying it is certainly tailored to a larger screen and a device more suitably aimed at multi-tasking. The new homescreen has the three standard Android device buttons integrated into the screen, with home, back and the menu button sitting in a bar at the bottom left corner of the screen. The bottom right of the screen is dedicated to a live stream of notifications, whilst the top left has a Google search button. The most interesting inclusion to the home screen comes with the ‘Apps’ menu in the top corner, giving the device a much more app-driven feel. Especially when you consider the homescreen is still easily personalised with your favourite apps.

3D

One of the big improvements on Android 3.0 comes as a result of ‘Render Script’, Android’s new hardware for accelerated 3D graphics.

In practical terms this enables 3D gaming, as demonstrated by Thomas Williamson, CEO of War Drum Studios who demoed two of their games and how well they perform in 3D – which we found pretty impressive.

But 3D capabilities add more than just some fancy game playing, with a new YouTube App showing off a snazzy 3D video wall and a new offering from Google – Google Body, allowing you to see the human body in 3D from skin down to the skeleton layer by graphic layer.

Android Market Web Store

Also launched was a new Android Market allowing Apps to be purchased from an online store (finally). It’s pretty much the same as on your Android handset, with a featured application section etc, but also more scope for developers to show off their swanky graphics through screenshots alongside the obvious developer information and descriptions. Once you purchase an app online it automatically start to download on your tablet or handset via cloud.

Developers will also be able to manually decide on the prices they wish to select for each market internationally, overriding the standard conversion prices currently.

It’s gone live already so have a look yourself here – Market.Android.com

Overall it feels like the OS has been designed to run much more smoothly on a tablet, quite literally with the inclusion of some smooth ‘transition’ graphics adding a slicker feel to proceedings.

The Web Store is a great addition, but really something that Google should have made available much earlier – not to mention the lack of a share to Facebook icon on the app pages that would have sat so nicely next to the share to Twitter function is, perhaps unsurprisingly, distinctly absent.

There really is no doubting that compared to Android 2.2 as currently running on the Samsung Galaxy Tab, Honeycomb really adds a much more rounded and fuller tablet experience. However the big test will come later this year with the launch of Apple’s iPad 2 and the OS they are developing for it.

Yesterday, T-Mobile USA and LG unveiled the T-Mobile G-Slate running Android 3.0, set to be released in the US this spring. In the meantime, we eagerly await an official release date for the UK.

Thanks to Zath.co.uk for the ‘Homescreen’ image

Thanks to Walyou.com for the ’3D’ image