Gingerbread is hidden under Honeycomb?

In somewhat unsurprising news, some folks discovered that Honeycomb isn’t actually built from the ground up and that it is just a shell running on top of Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). To reveal Gingerbread on a Honeycomb tablet, all you have to do is change the LCD density to 170 or higher, and after a reboot you’ll end up with the Gingerbread UI on your phone. The same lockscreen, launcher, and even app list will be on the tablet. Resetting the LCD density to 160 or lower and Honeycomb returns after a reboot.

It isn’t certain why Google left Gingerbread’s UI on the operating system (maybe a 170 or higher LCD density would screw up the Honeycomb UI), but it does makes you wonder – was Honeycomb just a placeholder for us to sink our teeth into while they took their time to work out Icecream Sandwich? Well, Icecream Sandwich should be coming at the end of the year, let’s see how Google plans to integrate both phones and tablets with that version of Android. Watch a video demonstration after the break: