Google to Hold Back 'Honeycomb' From Phones

Google will hold back its Android 3.0 "Honeycomb" to smaller phone manufacturers for an undisclosed period of time, Google said Thursday.

Google said that was designed for tablets, not phones, and that it had more work to do before Honeycomb was released in an open-source format, a Google spokesman said in an email.

The delay will probably be on the order of several months, Google told BusinessWeek.

"Android 3.0, Honeycomb, was designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes and improves on Android favorites such as widgets, multi-tasking, browsing, notifications and customization," Google said in an email to PCMag.com. "While we're excited to offer these new features to Android tablets, we have more work to do before we can deliver them to other device types including phones. Until then, we've decided not to release Honeycomb to open source. We're committed to providing Android as an open platform across many device types and will publish the source as soon as it's ready."

That means that smaller phone manufacturers who wish to use Honeycomb will have to wait an undisclosed amount of time before they can get access to the code. But larger OEMs, such as HTC or Motorola, already have access to it. Those OEMs, however, are generally placing it inside of .

However, that leaves carriers like Cricket Wireless, and its plans to carry that will run on Honeycomb, up in the air.

Andy Rubin, vice-president for engineering at Google and head of its Android group, explained the delay to BusinessWeek.

"To make our schedule to ship the tablet, we made some design tradeoffs," Rubin told the magazine. "We didn't want to think about what it would take for the same software to run on phones."

Rubin also said that Google didn't want to risk "creating a really bad user experience".

In February, at Google's Honeycomb launch, a Google spokesman said that that Honeycomb is , and "features will arrive on phones over time." But the version of Android which includes those features on phones may not be called "Honeycomb," or may have a different version number than 3.0.

In February, Google announced that the full SDK for Android 3.0 is now available to developers.

"The APIs are final, and you can now develop apps targeting this new platform and publish them to Android Market," Xavier Ducrohet, Android SDK tech lead, wrote in a blog post.

While app developers get their crack at Honeycomb, OEMs apparently will be much more restricted. Will this reduce Android fragmentation? Time will tell.