An interesting video has appeared on the AndroidDevelopers YouTube account demonstrating Android 3.0, "The Next Generation of Android Built Entirely for Tablet."
The new version of Android comes with all of the major apps on the platform, but they are rebuilt with tablet computing in mind, instead of a mobile phone experience. This tactic is much similar to how iOS for iPhone is different from iOS for iPad.
The video, which appears to be a leak as it was unlisted, then made private on the official channel, shows off a home screen with widgets for email, calendar, and browser favorites, as well as an application launcher placed at the bottom. This differs from iOS by including live widgets and information to users just by waking the device up, versus on both regular Android and iOS having an icon grid.
A version of Google Chrome, in a sleek black UI appears on the tablet with the video simply stating "Experience the full web with best in class web-browsing," as Flash is enabled on Android devices. Google also is demoing their own eBook application, Google eBooks, which joins both iBooks, Nook, and Kindle in the never-ending list of eBookstores.
Gmail has been optimized for the tablet, showing an interface much like what iPad users are used to when accessing their web-based mail from Google. YouTube has also been redesigned, displaying a common theme that other apps make use of, which is this curved grid containing images and information that can be navigated in a carousel-type fashion.
Android 3.0 will also feature the ability to talk face-to-face with "hundreds of millions of Google Talk users." The 3D Google Maps is the last tablet-optimized application featured, which adds quite literally another dimension to how one can work with maps.
Google is proud to show their "Entirely for Tablet" version of Android 3.0 and the work they have done in optimizing applications for tablet users, as tablet computing evolves and becomes a new standard. We're yet to see an official announcement from them at CES, but this video confirms there should be a major annoucement soon.
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