Notion Ink Adam ROM Review: Honeycomb Alpha (v. 11)

     This is, without a doubt, the best ROM available. I don't need to tell you about Honeycomb. If you must see the details about Honeycomb, here is a guide. How well does it run on the Adam? Pretty darn good. What makes it so good? Find out after the break.

     This is a very stable build for being an alpha version. You still get the small amount of force closes that you would expect from anything running android, but nothing major has happened yet. This is to be expected since this is actually a fully baked build on Honeycomb ripped from the Asus Eeepad Transformer. The devs have done a nice job of pulling out all signs of Asus. What you are left with is completely stock Honeycomb, and all of its goodness.

     On any and all 2.2 based ROMs, the touch screen felt a little unresponsive, which generally ruined the user experience for me. It wasn't terrible, but it was certainly worse than the XOOM or iPad. It may be the beautification of the UI, the tablet specific sizes, or a complete placebo, but the user experience shot through the roof with this ROM. Everything is perfectly snappy. It isn't quite as snappy as the XOOM, with a little snag here and there. You won't be disappointed.

     Eden notifications leave a lot to be desired with that tiny exclamation point up in the corner. The status bar hiding trick that Notion Ink employed worked to make status bar visible in all apps, but it is still out of the way. Notifications are on the right of the always present status/navbar. A click on the clock brings up quick settings and your notifications. On a side note, the dark glow that accompanies the clock pop-up is offset two inches to the left. Aside from the small glitch, it is really handy.

     Two shining features of Honeycomb over the Eden UI are the keyboard and the browser. The browser feels like you are using a small version of Chrome. Zooming and scrolling are both smooth. Bookmarks sync without worry. The only complaint I have (a common complaint across the web) is the rendering of webpages to the mobile versions. I'm not using a smartphone, and I don't wanted to be treated as such. Luckily you can just go into the debug setting to change the user agent string to desktop, or iPad, or whatever the heck you want.

     The Notion Ink keyboard is great isn't? I'm never going back to it after using the 3.0 offering. It's just better.

    This is now the ROM, and it will stay that way until Notion Ink gets their hands on some source code. With Honeycomb, the Adam can actually complete with other tablets. I finally like Adam over the iPad. Honeycomb bridges the gap between glossy, functional, and open. The best of all three, and it's now available for your enjoyment on the Notion Ink Adam.

Honeycomb 3.1 is Coming

     Today is day one at Google I/O, the announcements are in full swing. Of course, some of the pertain to the Adam. What would that be? Honeycomb 3.1 was announced  that brings widget resizing, USB support galore, and much improved multitasking/task management. What is the biggest takeaway from this? It will be open-sourced for Notion Ink to get their hands on. Honey from the garden of eden tastes even better.

Breaking: Honeycomb on Adam (Update)

     I have great news for you folks! Mr. Guy, the same guy to bring you the Pixel Qi toggle app, has now booted Honeycomb on the Adam. It is in very early stages, but it is booted, and that we can build upon. Now it's your turn devs. Take this pice of work to make an awesome ROM complete with NI apps. We are waiting.
     As you can see in the video below, it is still pre-alpha, but it is on its way. This particular ROM appears to be from the EeePad Transformer. The original post can be found here. The devs at TabletROMs.com re doing good!
(Update)
Help make the ROM stable to get a piece of the bounty. You will be rewarded for your dev efforts. How can you lose? See: http://tabletroms.com/forums/content.php?4-Stabilize-the-HC-Rom

The Wait For Honeycomb on Adam is Getting Ridiculous

     Full faith was resting on Notion Ink to give us an update to Honeycomb for our Adams. After the Adam was released many speculated that Honeycomb may never see the light of day from behind a Pixel Qi screen. Rohan has assured us multiple times that Notion Ink will do everything in their power to bring us the fabled Android for tablets. Now it looks as if the issue may be out of their hands.

     Google has decided to hold off on releasing the source code because it wasn't made for use on phones. This is old news, and can be fixed if Notion Ink becomes best friends with Google. There is a very slim chance of this happening, but one can hope. Now it appears that Nvidia won't be supporting the Adam's Harmony based internals for future updates. This is only rumor, but it is very worrisome. Will the Adam ever get Honeycomb? The world may never know for sure.

No Honeycomb Source Code! What It Means to an Adam Owner.

     Google is getting a little more strict on their open sourcing as of recent. They will be holding off on the release of the Honeycomb source until further refinements are made. The refinements in question are to make Honeycomb more phone friendly to developers and hackers. The pot isn't all sour as large manufacturers will  get access to the code.

     Now the big question here is will Notion Ink qualify as a "large" company in order to receive the rights to the hive. Probably not, but we can hope. The update will probably take a lot longer than many had hoped. What we know for sure is that the small developers that give us ROMs won't be able to so for a while. This is really a bad ordeal for Adam owners.

Why Does Everyone Seem To Hate Android? (Rant)

     Do you remember back to the days of the T-Mobile G1? The iPhone was still completely untouched in the market, and Android tried to stop its evil reign. While I wouldn't call its launch a failure, I wouldn't call it wildly successful either. Android brought the things people (nerds) truly wanted. It had an app store, multitasking, and openness. Android may have brought the goods, but it was ugly, slow, and downright complicated when compared to iPhone simplicity. Fast forward a few years and we have Honeycomb, but some bloggers still say the same things about Android.

     I was reading through Tech Crunch the other day when I came upon an article about why the iPad is still better than the XOOM. It was all about the software present in the XOOM. One reading it would think that Honeycomb is bunk, but it isn't. Honeycomb is far better than any previous version of Android ever was or will be. The author of the article was obviously a huge fan of Apple with very solid opinions. It seemed like he couldn't get past the sheer speed, elegance, and simplicity of iOS to notice any any downsides of his precious slate.

     Honeycomb has an awesome new UI that is simple while retaining the customizability that makes Android Android. The XOOM is lightning fast. The stuff in Honeycomb "they" were picking at were things like the occasional force close and slowing down if you are running too many apps. Those things are impossible to avoid unless you lock down the system and strip down a service until it only resembles its past. That is what Apple does. Multitasking isn't really multitasking on an iPad, and it is chained to the App Store.

     That isn't saying the iPad is a bad device. It's a magnificent device, but Honeycomb is also great and deserves the same amount of respect. Opinions are fine in the blogosphere, but you can't make these incredibly bias opinions and call it journalism.

  

Hands-On with The Motorola XOOM

     All Apple products aside, many people think of the XOOM as the closest competitor to the Adam because of it's extremely similar specs, and it's Android powered surface. If you look past the competitive nature of things, the XOOM is more like Adam's brother. The XOOM is the sign of things to come on the Adam. The Adam will be running Honeycomb once Notion Ink gets it ready. A few minutes with the XOOM was my peek into my Adam's future.

     Honeycomb is gorgeous. This is what the Adam should and will be in the coming months. The first thing to point out is that the Honeycomb browser is miles ahead of the Eden browser. I like the Eden browser, but the tab switching is difficult and slow, it has a tendency to force close too often to be useful, and it isn't easy enough to just Google something. The full tabs are my favorite part of the 3.0 browser as well as the desktop-ish features to make it more useful in the long run. The XOOM doesn't have flash, but the video in the picture above played just fine. My best guess is that it's in HTML5, even though it says flash on my laptop.

     One of the biggest things the Adam can learn from the XOOM is the home screen; it actually has one. Panels are nice, but they should not replace the entire home screen. Widgets, multiple home screens, and easy app arranging are fundamental parts of Android that they simply through out the window. I sincerely hope they don't get rid of the home screen in Honeycomb with Eden.

     The XOOM felt really snappy in everything it did just like all of the reviewers said it would. The biggest take away from that was the fact that the XOOM has almost the same innards as it's Adam brother. The Adam is set on the hardware front, but it's the software that counts. The software on the Adam is miles behind in it's current state. It's buggy, unresponsive, and just not ready for prime time. The Adam also has the thumbs up on Eden apps and ports galore. If Honeycomb isn't ruined by Eden, the Adam will shine like the sun on a June day.

The Question of Eden on Honeycomb

     In Rohan's latest blog post he made a quick statement saying that the Eden apps have been ported to Honeycomb. We all know that the Adam is eventually getting an update to Honeycomb. It may be weeks or months before Notion Ink finalizes the update for us. The Adam will be absolutely awesome with Honeycomb on it, but the question is how much of the Eden UI will be thrown on top of Honeycomb?

     As you can see in the picture above, vanilla Honeycomb even looks good on the Adam. There's no telling how far into the core the Eden UI will dig, but this is most likely not what the final product will end up looking like. Unlike previous versions of Android, it is very hard to put a custom UI over the top of Honeycomb without completely destroying it. This is a good thing, because I generally hate the custom skins they throw on top on Android.
   
     Way back in December Android Police had an interview with sir Rohan of Notion Ink. When asked if Eden would be preserved with Honeycomb, he said yes. In that same interview Rohan also said he would bring the Android Market with the Honeycomb update. (I'm still crossing my fingers in hope on the Market.) A lot has changed since December and Notion Ink's design team could have very well chnged their minds on the Eden thing.

     Honeycomb could definitely benefit from the panels concept of multitasking (see this column). They have made Froyo into something that is truly tablet worthy. That required a lot of work and deep digging into the source code. The problem could be that Eden is built totally around a smartphone OS, and cannot be reworked too well with a tablet OS. In Eden they have replaced the normal multitasking interface with a panel switcher that is completely useless with the multitude of apps that do not have panels. In Honeycomb, the app switching has been moved to a soft button in the status bar area. What I'm saying is that some things simply can't get carried over to Honeycomb.

     Honeycomb is very widget heavy, and if Eden completely annihilates the home screen like they do in the current version, it could be a very low point of Eden. The home screen needs to stay. They could possibly throw a dedicated panel button in the navigation bar at the bottom to bring up the panel view. That brings e to my next point. Notion Ink has managed to add a hiding feature to the Froyo status bar so it will be out of site unless it is truly necessary. Rohan said that tablets shouldn't always have a status bar to take up screen real-estate. This idea is going to go out of the windows if they want a feasible Honeycomb design. The always there navigation bar is another high point in Honeycomb, and to get rid of it would just not work.

     Coming back to the panels idea now. If they added an extra button in the navigation bar to open the panels, it would be absolutely fantastic. I'm not saying that it should replace the recent apps button, but it would do nicely in the adjacent space. It would be there at all times to quickly start your multitasking duties. The best part about having a dedicated panels button is that the home screen will remain intact. I can't stress enough how important it is to keep the home screen intact.

     There is no doubt that Honeycomb can get better with a sprinkling of Eden on top, but a smattering would be all too much. Honeycomb needs little improving as it is, so too much wouldn't jive very well with a lot of people (me included). I suppose if Eden angers you too much you could always get a different tablet or a custom ROM. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and the pool on the right.

Honeycomb Has Changed my Opinion of Custom UI's

     A little more than a year ago the greatly rumored Google phone was announced, and everyone thought it was fantastic. It has since set the standard for hardware. The appeal in the Nexus One for me was only partly the hardware; the software had the most amount of pull. It packed stock eclair without any of that skinned garbage. Custom UI weren't as commonplace then as they were now which is not the way I want things going. The UI's they put on phones are sometimes beneficial, but they usually cause problems like Samsung's Touchwiz. And then came Honeycomb....

     Honeycomb has this awesome new user interface that is almost impossible and unreasonable to skin. HTC is convinced to put Sense on the Flyer for it to get Honeycomb. Notion Ink is going to deck out Honeycomb with their Eden UI. What we have at this point in time are a ton of tablets that all run stock Honeycomb. They have very little differences other than a few hardware specs. It's a massive see of sameness. Is that what it would be like if all android phones ran stock builds? Probably.

     Manufacturers have every right to meddle with the source code to their own pleasing. They need a way to distinguish themselves from the crowd. Often times, this is the only reason they have their own skin. Is there any other reason for Touchwiz's existence? I still hate custom UI's, but I see there purpose for the people making them. Without them we would have many different bodies floating around with the same face.

The One Burning Question That Still Hasn't Been Answered

    Will honeycomb run on smartphones too? Nobody has answered this yet. They have shown an alternate UI in the SDK when the resolution was changed to smartphone size, but that is far from a definitive answer. I want answers!

That Honeycomb Event Was a Bit Disappointing

    If you didn't want that Android event today, you didn't miss much. They ran through Honeycomb again, but it wasn't anything we haven't seen before. They did make a couple of announcements about the Android Market though. Ironically, Blackberry made a few announcements today about the same thing.

    The Market has a new web-based store to allow you to send apps to your phone or tablet from you computer. Go to market.android.com to browse at your own, free will. When you want to buy an app, just hit buy/install and it starts downloading on your phone of choice. The Market now supports in-app purchases as well as a few other developer features.
   On the Blackberry side of things, App World 2.1 was announced today that also supports in-app purchases. This sounds a lot like the Kinect and Playstation Move, but on a smaller scale.

Honeycomb Event is Tomorrow... What Do We Want To See?

   Google is holding a Honeycomb (Android 3.0) event tomorrow to tell the future of Android. There are plenty of they will be unveiling/telling about tomorrow and here are some of the big ones most of us want to see:

     One thing Apple has had over Android since the dawn of time is their app store in a desktop version. There have been rumors of a web-based Android Market. How awesome would that be? It would provide Android users that don't have the market on their device a way to get at all of those awesome apps that are exclusive to the market.
    
     One thing that Android has always been bad at is music. There isn't a good way to sync your music unless you opt for a third-party solution. iOS and Windows Phone 7 seem to have this art down to a science. Android needs to join the crowd. I've even heard rumors of a streaming music service called Google Music.
  
     Honeycomb needs to have a separate UI for smartphone use. Having a separate OS version for smartphones and tablets would only lead to further fragmentation of Android. More than likely they will also unveil all of the other secrets Honeycomb has to offer. To find out yourself, watch it live tomorrow, February 2 at 10 a.m. pacific on the YouTube Developer Channel. (link)