ASUS Planning to Give Android 3.2 Honeycomb to Eee Pad Transformer Soon

ASUS announced via Twitter yesterday that it is currently playing around with Android 3.2 Honeycomb on its blockbuster tablet, the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer. ASUS is still testing Honeycomb’s latest and last version, and is looking forward to sending out the upgrade to all Transformers. No target release date has been specified, although it will most likely come out ahead of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS).

Android 3.2 Honeycomb will reportedly be the last pre-ICS version in the Honeycomb series. The earlier versions of Honeycomb were optimized for large-screen, mostly 10-inch, Android slates and tablets, and had limited support for mobile processors. Version 3.2 carries new features, such as the following:

optimized for 7-inch devices,
expands support for more mobile processors such as NVIDIA Tegra 2 and Qualcomm’s processors,
fixes some bugs and improves hardware acceleration, and
provides updates to widgets and apps (e.g., Movies, Movie Studio, Music, etc.).
With Android 3.2 Honeycomb’s support for the NVIDIA Tegra 2 mobile processor (which the Transformer sports), the upgrade for the Transformer could only bode well for its users. Many users have reported the 10.1-inch Transformer to be stable on both versions 3.0 and 3.1 of Honeycomb, and 3.2 just might make it more stable. Apart from that, the upgrade may even make it perform much better than before.



ASUS surprised the Android world with the Eee Pad Transformer, which several critics quickly labeled–not necessarily pejoratively–as the “poor person’s iPad.” The comparison to the iPad is rather obvious, since the Eee Pad Transformer has powerful hardware, a comfortable form factor, and awesome display.

The Transformer’s price is relatively lower and more affordable than the iPad’s, and that’s exactly the reason many people think that the Transformer is a smarter and more frugal alternative to its expensive competitor. Good reason simply asks, “Why waste a few more hundred dollars on an expensive gadget when you can get the same experience and performance at a lesser price?” That question has been asked a thousand times over and the answer is always a no-brainer. The result? The Eee Pad Transformer became one of the most–if not the most–popular non-iPad Android tablet.