Intel CEO Paul Otellini has confirmed that the company is working to bring Google Android 3.0 Honeycomb to devices with x86 chips. Honeycomb is Google’s first crack at an operating system designed for tablets, and Intel clearly doesn’t want to cede the growing tablet space to competitors with ARM-based chips.

Google hasn’t yet released the source code for Android 3.0 to the public, but select partners have access, and Otellini says Intel is one of those partners.

There had been rumors making the rounds that Intel would push its low power Atom chips as solutions for Android tablets later this year. Now it looks like we can remove the rumor label. Otellini isn’t promising that we’ll see Atom-based Android tablets this year, but he says he’d be “disappointed” if it doesn’t happen within 12 months.

via SlashGear

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,547 other subscribers

9 replies on “Intel confirms that Android 3.0 is coming to x86 tablets”

  1. Wonder what if any apps from the market will work on the x86, or if Intel is partnering with Google to get some kind of automated port going. Many apps have native code compiled for ARM that may make it difficult to just run it on the x86 platform.

  2. there’s more to it than that. Speaking as a tech journalist specializing in Linux and owner of an eeePC 900, the lobotomized version of Xandros distro installed on it sucked sh*t through a straw. I think there might have been a dozen apps available not preloaded rather than the tens of thousands of apps available for free download on a conventional Linux distro installation.

    A tab-based interface makes sense on a smartphone or a tablet that doesn’t have (by definition) a full-sized keyboard. A netbook looks and works enough like a laptop or desktop that people EXPECT to be able to do the same sort of things.

    Which didn’t work on the “Linux” eeePC because the apps weren’t there. The tab-based interface was a massive PITA to use. Good points of Xandros for netbooks? It might worked well for a person who has never used a computer before and wants to join her grandkids on Facebook.

    Frankly, I don’t blame end users for running away screaming, if this had been my first exposure to Linux, I would have run screaming myself and installed XP.

    I installed Kubuntu as soon as the warranty expired and sold a how-to article on upgrading … and when I upgraded to the S101 I am using to type this post, I said “F*ck the warranty”, booted it once in XP to verify operation, and promptly installed Kubuntu. I am a happy Linux netbook user.

    Works great, though for productivity stuff, I usually use NX remote control to run apps off my desktop Kubuntu quad-core SSD workstation… mainly so all my data lives in one place and if my netbook gets lost or stolen, all I’ve lost is the replacement cost.

    That said, there ARE Linux mobile UIs which do not suck… when run on tablets (where Unity makes sense) and I think Unity would look good on a smartphone. These UIs have access to all of Open Source, though some apps won’t work well on small screens. But when I upgraded Kubuntu and found a Unity tab-oriented “netbook” UI, I spent 15 minutes looking for the setting to change Unity to conventional desktop. Found it, otherwise I’d be using some other Linux distro.

  3. I wonder what percentage of these forthcoming Atom based
    tablets will have Android replaced by Windows, just as in the
    early stages of netbooks.

    In the netbook situation, Windows became the dominant
    operating system within about a year from netbooks’ introduction.
    This phenomenon started in Third World countries, but quickly
    spread to developed nations.

    1. The notable thing in the netbooks’ case was that Windows
      was being installed by the netbooks’ end users, until the
      netbook manufacturers saw what was going on and started
      preloading XP.

      1. Uh, had a little more to do with MS strong arming those companies to install Windows and not Linux, wasn’t really a choice by the manufacturers.

      2. MS gave XP away for free to Netbook manufacturers. Some users are installing it, but the demand was pushed by MS more than anything.

Comments are closed.