Honeycomb 3.1 on my Acer Iconia a500 Review

I have been using my Acer Iconia a500 tablet for a couple of days now since it updated to Honeycomb 3.1earlier this week.  I feel like I've had enough hands on to develop an initial impression of it, even if I may miss some features.  I'll hit the high points that I have encountered with my brief hands-on time.

It's no secret that the update process was somewhat painful (if not self induced by me) as you can read in my previous posts concerning the matter.  However, all the trouble was worth it.  So what do we get in Honeycomb 3.1?  A couple of apps, wifi improvements' and a few other little things.  First up, if you haven't gotten the update yet, make sure you are in a good wifi area.  The update is large weighing in a little over 330MB's.  But once it's downloaded the installl is pretty quick.

As far as apps go, we get two noticeable ones. Now we have Google's Movie Editor and Google Videos.  The Movie Editor allows some basic editing of video shot with the devices camera (which works pretty well).  And Google Videos allows you to not only rent movies and tv shows via the Android Market for a price, but also gives you a central place to show off any video you may have stored locally on the tablet.  Also to note (I don't remember downloading either of these apps myself so I assume they were in the update); I now have both the Nook ereader app and Zinio for digital magazine subscriptions.  So if they weren't actually in the update, just overlook me.  lol

A couple of the other things I have noticed is the 'Cell Standby' process that was reporting battery usage (10% to 20% at times) is now gone.  The transitions from the 'Apps' menu back to the Home Screen seem to be a little snappier.  And the overall battery life seems to be just a little bit better (of course this could be due to my usage this week as well).  But overall, the tablet just feels a little more responsive.

Despite the issues I have had with the Honeycomb Upgrade rollout from Acer, the Iconia a500 tablet is a wonderful device and I have no complaints with the hardware itself (or Honeycomb for that fact).  Hopefully, whenever 3.2 is rolled out, my experience will be a little better (of course, as soon as I'm prompted for the next update I'll take it right away instead of 'Remind Me Later').