Android Honeycomb 3.2 is on its way to tablet devices very soon, meaning that new and improved features are being dug up all the time. The latest is an interesting “zoom” feature which will make apps that aren’t customised for tablets able to run on a big screen.
Honeycomb is a great OS but let’s face it, there are only a handful of apps that are really optimised for it and for use on large screen tablet devices. If you download an Android app from the Market that is designed for use primarily on smartphones, you’ll find that you get a small app window sitting in the middle of a large screen.
With the new zoom feature, users will have the option to either “stretch to fill screen” or “zoom to fill screen”. This is going to make Honeycomb a more attractive prospect for both app developers and for consumers, and hopefully it will mean the entire Android apps catalogue will be compatible on Honeycomb tablets.
Granted this won’t make apps that were designed with smartphones in mind look great – when zoomed in the image may appear pixellated and slightly stretched.
We know that the next iteration of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, will be for all types of devices. Perhaps this option is the first step towards making Android apps compatible for smartphones and tablets alike.