Google has already said that it doesn’t consider Android 2.x to be an operating system suitable for tablets. While Samsung, Dell, Toshiba, and a number of other device makers seem to disagree, LG seems to be on the same page as Google. The company had been planning to launch a tablet using Android 2.2, but has instead decided to wait until after Google launches the next version of Android, codenamed Gingerbread before deciding whether to run with an Android tablet.
That’s kind of a far cry from LG’s earlier claims that its upcoming tablet would offer “superior performance” to the competition. I guess someone decided that it wasn’t possible to deliver on that kind of promise with an operating system that isn’t technically designed for the device it’s running on.
LG isn’t saying when it will launch a tablet a this point. Gingerbread could be ready to go later this year, but it’s likely that we won’t see many devices (phones or tablets) running the operating system until early next year.
It’s also not entirely clear what kind of tablet optimizations Google has planned for Gingerbread. My shortlist would include an improved keyboard that scales to larger screens and Android Market access (plus a dedicated section of the Market for apps that are known to work well on devices with larger, higher resolution displays than most Android phones).