Android 3.1 Hands-On: How Much Better Is It?

[=X=]

Laptop mag has a hands on review of HC 3.1

Last week at the Google I/O conference, the company released Android 3.1, an update to the Honeycomb tablet OS that offers greater stability, premium movie rentals, resizable widgets, Flash Player 10.3, and more. We installed the update on the Motorola Xoom and gave it a spin to find out if the platform finally has that fully baked smell. Click through to see our hands-on evaluation of all the new features. (more...)

[Bilbo1967]

Thanks for the link.

Unfortunately, the update hasn't made it to my Xoom in the UK yet

[RockdaMan]

The big questions:

In our last hands-on with Flash Player 10.2, we noted that it was impossible to play HD videos or toggle the volume option on YouTube videos. We are happy to report that, after updating to Flash 10.3, many of those issues have been resolved. We were able to watch YouTube and Vevo HD videos without a problem. We also noticed that videos started a little faster and played much more smoothly.

To see how the Xoom could handle interactive Flash sites, we loaded the website for the Volkswagen Jetta. Rotating the car in the 360 external view was fairly smooth, but not as easy to manipulate as using a mouse on a PC. Similarly, on the Sony Internet TV site, transitions between characters at the bottom of the screen and videos were somewhat seamless, but nowhere near what you’d get on a desktop or laptop.

[covfam]

Originally Posted by =X=

Laptop mag has a hands on review of HC 3.1

That is great news! i may have to retry the xoom at my local verizon and see how it is. im glad to see that they added the movie service, i rent/watch movies & tv shows on itunes. i tried a few times on samsungs media hub but samsung charges almost twice as much sometimes 3 times as much for the same rentals on android/amazon and itunes.

Now if they start getting tv series on android market i may be able to break away from itunes!

[wodin]

Originally Posted by covfam

i may be able to break away from itunes!

That can only be positive!

[madsquabbles]

i've read that you can actually visit xda's forum list without it stuttering now using the 2010 template.

[covfam]

Well i was at my local verizon and they had a demo xoom with 3.1 on it and i have to say its like night & day better than 2 weeks ago on 3.0.
2 weeks ago the xoom crashed 3 times while demoing it, video stutterd, ui clumsy,
Now the ui moves smoothly, the interface feels more responsive, the flash video plays fine and smoothly and playing with it for a half hour i had no crash.

In my opinion THIS is the motorola xoom that motorola should have rolled out NOT honeycomb 3.0 with 3.1 the xoom feels just right. imho its also lightyears better than my galaxy tabs froyo 2.2
The honeycomb 3.1 is more intuitive than 2.2 as well as 3.0 kinda like how apple and ios "it just works" honeycomb 3.1 is closest to it just works feeling that in my opinion the other androids still felt like beta testing.