Google: No Android 3.0 Honeycomb custom UIs allowed for now
Von Bernd Kling am 24. März 2011
Unhappy manufacturers are talking
Honeycomb’s new user interface is optimized for tablets and not to be tinkered with in the upcoming months, says Google. Any customization ist strictly verboten, as was revealed at Droidcon, a developers conference in Berlin.
LG Electronics told German tech blog Golem: Freedom to tinker with the Honeycomb UI will come later, when Android Honeycomb is established on numerous devices. But for now Google wants to make sure Honeycomb always looks like Honeycomb and is easily recognisable as such.
The OEMs are obviously unhappy about that and desperate to put their own custom UIs on top of Android to differentiate their products. LG and HTC are already working on their own customizations. They may come as a future update or be only available for upcoming devices.
Google’s preliminary ban on customization has led to some confusion about the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. It was first shown in February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona running Android 3.0 Honeycomb without any interface changes. In Europe this model will likely be launched in April exclusively by Vodafone and therefore be named Galaxy Tab 10.1V. There are also some noticeable hardware differences to the Galaxy Tab 10.1 to be launched in June. This other Galaxy Tab 10.1 will later be customized with Samsung’s TouchWiz UX via a software update but won’t have TouchWiz out of the box.
