Android Honeycomb 3.0 tips up on Asus tablets

GOOGLE'S ANDROID 3.0 codenamed Honeycomb will power three of Asus' four tablets that it is unveiling at the Consumer Electronics Show, with the fourth running Windows 7.

The Asus announcement also confirms that Honeycomb is Android 3.0 and not 2.4 as some had suspected. As Gingerbread is Android 2.3 and H comes after G, Honeycomb had been thought by some to be 2.4 and not 3.0.

The Asus Android tablets are called Eee Pad Transformer, Eee Pad Slider and Eee Pad Memo. The Transformer and Slider are 10.1-inch tablets that will be released in April and May, respectively.

The Slider has a slide-out Qwerty keyboard, hence the name, and has a Nvidia Tegra 2 chip, an Nvidia GPU and a 1.2MP front facing camera plus a 5MP rear facing camera. It's aimed at business as well as consumers.

The Transformer also uses Nvidia's CPU and GPU and has a removable keyboard, hence it transforms - what marketing genius comes up with these names? Its price will vary from $399 to $699. Why the price almost doubles is anyone's guess at this point.

The third tablet, Memo, likely will incur the wrath of Steve Jobs because it is a 7.1-inch display device. Apple's CEO has stated categorically that all such 7-inch tablets will be "dead-on-arrival". The Memo will use a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, will be available from June and will be priced mysteriously between $499 and $699.

The Wintel tablet is called the Eee Slate EP121 and it comes with 2GB or 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 32GB or 64GB of SSD storage and has Bluetooth and a 12.1-inch 1280x800 touch LED display as well as an Intel Core i5 CPU. Set to go on sale later this month, it also has 802.11n wireless support, a mini-HDMI port, two USB ports, a card reader, and a 2MP dual webcam. Its price tag will range from $999 to $1,099.

The UK pricing and availability dates have not been released. µ