Google has spent a bit of time showing off what Google Android 3.0 Honeycomb will look like on tablets, and there’s good reason for that: It’s the first version of Android designed with tablets in mind. But it looks like the operating system isn’t just for tablets. Google has hinted that it will also be able to run on devices with smaller screens, and the folks at PocketNow realized that if you install the Android 3.0 SDK and run the emulator with the screen resolution shrunk to cellphone-sized proportions you can start to see what Honeycomb will look like on phones.
Basically, Honecyomb for smartphones looks a lot like Google Android 2.x on smartphones. While the tablet user interface has a persistent status bar at the bottom of the screen with soft buttons for Home, Back, and Recent Apps functions, on smartphones the status bar moves back to the top of the display. You can also swipe down from the top to display the notification bar — just as you can do with current Android devices.
That’s about it for the details at this point, because the emulator is still kind of buggy and crash-prone, but it’s just a preview version of the SDK and Google plans to launch updates soon which should provide us with more information on how Honeycomb will work on tablets and phones.
Update: Engadget managed to get past the crashing home screen by installing LauncherPro. The site has posted a few more screenshots which show new status icons and pop-up dialogs. The web browser and other apps look very similar to their Android 2.x counterparts. For instance there’s no sign of the browser tabs that you get at the top of the screen in the tablet version of Honeycomb.
You can also find a video posted by YouTube user keyboardcowb0y after the break.
