Android Honeycomb 3.1

With great anticipation I received the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 to test, as it packs the latest version of Honeycomb, Android 3.1, that addresses some of the stability problems I had with version 3.0. After using Honeycomb 3.1 for a while, my overall reaction to it is a mixed bag of ‘meh’.

Don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying the Galaxy Tab 10.1 as it is a really nice tablet, easily the nicest Android tablet I have used to date. The problem is that perception is in spite of Honeycomb 3.1, not a result of it.

Inconsistent experience

The biggest problem I have with Honeycomb is due to the design choice that Google made to handle the larger displays. Putting system controls in all four corners of the display invokes feelings of inconsistency while using the tablet. Notifications pop up all the time in the lower right corner. The clock is in the lower right corner too, along with access to common Android functions and settings.

Access to the installed applications is in the upper right corner of the display, an area in Honeycomb that the user never goes to on the home screen except to run apps not sitting in plain sight. Running a Google search at any time is just a tap away, but requires hitting an icon sitting in the upper left corner.

Then there are the main Honeycomb controls, the soft buttons for going Back, accessing the home screen, and displaying the running apps. Those controls sit in the lower left corner of the screen.

The four corner design choice by Google means that every time I want to do something in Honeycomb, I must stop and think where to go for it. Upper left, right, bottom of the screen? The end result is I often tap a corner control only to realize it wasn’t the one I wanted. A lot of tapping takes place to get around erroneous taps, and that is the mark of poor design in my book.

Earlier versions of Android aren’t optimized to take advantage of larger displays, but at least all of the controls are tightly integrated and always where you expect them to be. After just a short time with tablets running the older Froyo or Gingerbread, it is possible to operate the system with little thought, just instinct. That is the mark of good design.

It doesn’t help Honeycomb that app developers can contribute to the four corner mess. Lots of Honeycomb optimized apps, and there are quite a few, put the icon to access the app settings in the upper right. This isn’t intuitive due to the Honeycomb use of this corner to access My Apps on the home screen as described. But with consistent use of the corner for app settings, it’s just a matter of practice to get used to it. At least that would be the case if all apps put the settings here.

Other app developers have a scheme of granting access to app settings via a soft button in the lower left corner, next to the official Honeycomb soft buttons. You have to look carefully to see it as the settings icon appears to be a system control, not an app control. It looks a lot like the running tasks icon, too, which makes it even harder to spot at first. The end result is there is not a consistent user experience in apps for common functions. It’s not Google’s fault that developers are using different methods in apps, but I would maintain that it is Google’s fault for allowing it to happen.