Android Honeycomb 3.2 due this month, Motorola’s Xoom gets it first

According to “industry sources” who spoke to Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes, Google is about to release Android Honeycomb 3.2 to select tablet makers at the end of July or early August:

Google is expected to release its Android 3.2 OS to production partners at the end of July or early August, according to industry sources. Asustek has indicated it will launch Android 3.2-based tablets soon, while Huawei Technologies also said it will roll out a 7-inch Android 3.2 tablet in the third quarter.

Meanwhile, CNET confirms that Google is already pushing out the Honeycomb 3.2 update to the Motorola Xoom, hoping to bring the software to other tablets “in the near future”.

Android 3.2 is a minor update that will improve hardware acceleration and bring optimization for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors that power many top-selling Android smartphones and tablets. The software update will also bring improvements in Google-created apps, including Movie Studio, Movies, Music and Widget. It will also have a new compatibility mode for apps called zoom-to-fill. “Imagine viewing your app at the size of a phone screen then zooming in about 200 percent,” Google explains on the Android Developers blog. And as we explained earlier, this Honeycomb version also takes into account the popular seven-inch tablet form factor, which continues to be in abundance…

Partners promising to release Honeycomb 3.2 devices include Asustek and HTC who will upgrade their existing tablets to Android 3.2, in addition to seven-inch tablets from Huawei Technologies (MediaPad) and Acer (Iconia Tab A100). Google said at its developer conference in May it would release Android 4.0 by the year’s end. Known under the code-name of Ice Cream Sandwich, that Android version will for the first time unite various devices under a single software umbrella and bring feature-parity between Android-driven smartphones and tablets.