As we informed you earlier, the Acer Iconia Tab A100, the smaller sized version of the well received Acer Iconia Tab A500, expected to hit shelves on May 14 or thereabouts has been delayed. The reasons were not known but DigiTimes sources tell us that the delay is because of incompatibility issues between Honeycomb and the smaller screen size. The release window has been postponed to August-September.
Honeycomb is Android’s tablet optimized version and has been built with 10 inch screens in mind. Some Honeycomb applications are not compatible with the smaller 7 inch screen size of the Acer Iconia Tab A100. Acer is trying to iron out these issues with Google rather than ditch Honeycomb in favor of Android 2.3 that works well on the smaller form factor (HTC Flyer and Samsung Galaxy Tab being cases in point). Well, can’t blame them for that.
We’ve been looking forward to the 7 inch Honeycomb tab. And since HTC has also promised a Honeycomb update to the HTC Flyer at some point, this issue had to be worked out sooner or later.
Acer will postpone the launch of Iconia A100, an Android 3.0 7-inch tablet PC, from May-June as originally scheduled to August-September 2011 because Android 3.0 has some compatible issues with 7-inch screen and Google is currently busy resolving other issues, according to industry sources.
Acer believes that the 7-inch device will have its own unique market and will be suitable for female users as the device is lighter in weight, the sources said. But since the company is unwilling to give up the latest Android version, the company has decided to delay the launch of the product by about one quarter, the sources added.
It looks like we’ll just have to live with the delay. Blame it all on Google’s fragmentation. This is just the kind of problem that Google hopes to resolve with the Android version Ice Cream Sandwich which will be much appreciated by Android app developers too.
[via DigiTimes]
