Google holding Honeycomb source code – not ready yet

Those who may be waiting to get their hands on the Android 3.0 source code may have a little while to wait as it was confirmed by Engadget that, following a report from BusinessWeek, Google will be hanging onto the source code because they essentially don't feel it's ready for people to hack it into pieces and start porting onto devices other than OEM tablets. Google had this to say;

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. 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.

There you have it, no Honeycomb for a little while yet. No doubt Google has become a little hardened by Android's “opensourceness' when Android 3.0 was released originally for tablet use, when manufacturers continued and still continue to put Android 2.3 or earlier versions on their tablet offerings. Google isn't saying it ‘won't' get released, just that they need to work out a few bugs yet. Stands to reason I say, look at how far Android has come since the first smartphone version came out. The same can be said for the first version designed for tablets. That said, I suspect we'll see faster releases after Ice Cream starts making its way to devices in the near future.