According to PCMag, at the Google event on Wednesday where the Android Market changes and Android Honeycomb were shown off, a Google employee mentioned that the Honeycomb version shown there was only designed for tablets, but hinted that a release for smartphones with some of Honeycomb's features may be coming later.

At first, some Android blogs misinterpreted the comments to indicate that Android Honeycomb was not coming to smartphones, but that conclusion went against Matias Duarte's comments back at CES that Honeycomb was not just for tablets. Luckily, Google contacted some blogs to correct the story.

In the follow-up contact mentioned above, Andrew Kovac, a Google spokesman, said that “The version of Honeycomb we’ve shown is optimized for tablet form factors. All of the UI changes are the future of Android. Yesterday’s event focused on tablet form factors, which is where you’ll first see Honeycomb.”

The statement that tablets will first see Honeycomb seems to be a pretty safe indication that they are working on making a port to smartphones containing some of the features. We've already seen some pictures of how it may look.

PCMag writes that one of the possible features in the tablet version which isn't beneficial for smartphone users is the tabbed browsing feature that Google has introduced for tablets.

We've also seen that Android Honeycomb already has support and special UI features designed specifically for smartphone-sized screens, so it makes little sense for Honeycomb to not make an appearance on smartphones.

No word on when the Honeycomb-for-smartphone build will be released, but in all likelihood, the Nexus line will the first handsets to get it. 

Image from PCMAG