Analyst bashes Android Honeycomb

Android may have taken the mobile industry by storm, but Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research remains utterly unimpressed by Google’s tablet-specific version of the popular OS.

Indeed, Chowdhry recently termed Honeycomb an OS “by the geeks – for the geeks” which will ultimately fail in its quest for mainstream adoption. 

To illustrate his (supposed) point, the analyst highlighted Motorola’s Honeycomb-powered Xoom tablet, which he claimed suffers from freezes, crashes, “inconsistent” battery life, insufficient standby time and malfunctioning text auto-wrap.

Chowdhry also blamed Google’s origins as a web company for the (alleged) above-mentioned issues.

“Gmail and Google Voice work well as long as [the] products are free,” he opined, but emphasized consumers were rather “unforgiving” after paying $800 for a hobbled device.

Unsuprisingly, Will Shanklin of Android Police questioned Chowdhry’s hyper-negative assessment of Honeycomb, noting that his so-called points generated more “confusion and questions” than answers.

“[For example], three of those four complaints could easily be attributed more to the XOOM and its hardware than with Honeycomb. Plus how do his gripes about battery life and stability relate to his assertion that Honeycomb is for geeks?”

“Not to mention, what exactly about Android 3.0 is so terribly complicated and technically advanced? It’s not as if you boot it up and are presented with a Linux command line – we are talking home screens, app drawers, widgets, and Angry Birds. [Seriously], is our populous so dumbed down that this is considered ‘for geeks?’ Must we pronounce something dead because it doesn’t go to extremes to cater to the least common denominator?”

(Via Forbes & Android Police)