Honeycomb Has A Fighting Chance Against The iPad

If you’d asked me a week ago what I thought about Honeycomb, the tablet version of Android, I would have said that it was in very bad shape and that it would be several months before it could even hold a candle to the iPad 2. Because despite my excitement to see Android take on Apple’s ridiculously successful iPad, my experience with the Motorola Xoom — the first Honeycomb tablet — has been decidedly poor.

From day one things were off to a bad start. At first, Android Market would crash literally every time I opened it. The Android team fixed that pretty quickly, but the OS was still riddled with weird bugs: swiping between home screens is laggy, widgets go blank and need to refresh, and there are myriad other glitches that pop up at random. And even beyond the bugs, there are weird quirks in the OS that feel poorly thought out (seriously, why does the ‘Home’ button look like an Up arrow?). But now I’ve had some time to test out the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1,  the new tablet that was given to Google I/O attendees and will be available in stores beginning June 8. And after spending the last couple of days using it around my apartment, I’m much more optimistic. In fact, I’m guessing this device is going to do very well, and that it foreshadows a bright future ahead for Honeycomb.

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