AllThingsD has posted clips of their interview with Andy Rubin at their D: Dive Into Mobile conference last night. With the release of the Nexus S and Gingerbread yesterday, most people expected him to talk about those products, but Rubin surprised many by pulling out and demonstrating a prototype Android tablet running Android 3.0 Honeycomb. To do this and give up some competitive advantage seems to be an indication that Google wants to quell the masses and show that they are, in fact, working hard on a tablet OS. According to Rubin, the actual device on hand was by Motorola, running a dual-core NVIDIA processor and would be available "next year." As he indicated, the choice of an NVIDIA processor likely had to do with the 3D graphic rendering he showed off in Google Maps. Any dual-core arm chip probably could handle similar tasks, however, and it will be interesting to see when this tablet will hit market. NVIDIA's Tegra 2 core was hyped a ton at CES almost a year ago, but almost none of the products that featured it ever came to market. Those that did, such as the Boxee Box, ditched Tegra 2 late in the game. NVIDIA will have to deliver something more solid and usable for this tablet to make it to the market on time.
Give Google a bit of credit here in this short preview, though. They seem to have put some real thought into how their tablet is going to be visually laid out, at least on the home screen For as much as the Android interface mimicked the iPhone, this tablet lay out doesn't seem to be patterned after the iPad's familiar grid of icons. In applications, it does appear that they will have a similar split of APIs that follow the columned layout of the iPad, where full-screen iPhone apps appear in a horizontal manner on the tablet, revealing more information. They are also doing away with hardware menu buttons, which will be good for the flexibility of the tablet, but also scary for anyone who is familiar with their Android phones locking up unexpectedly.
Overall, I think Rubin came off far more likable and less combative towards Apple than in interviews at CES last January and in the middle of last year. Whether he felt the need to dial it back or is just feeling more naturally confident with the explosive success of Android, it made for an enjoyable interview. More clips follow below, and hopefully All Things D will release the full video soon.