Almost a year has passed since we last saw Marvell's Kinoma platform in person, but the time has finally arrived for its release. We got the chance to sit down with Peter Hoddie, VP of the Kinoma Platform, to learn a little bit more about his software and what Kinoma can bring to your smartphone experience. First, a quick refresher. Kinoma Play is technically an app, but in reality it serves as an entirely new UI for your Android device running versions 2.1 and up. The platform currently has 50 of its own apps -- written in Kinoma Play Script, a Javascript language -- that are obtained through the Kinoma store, and these apps can be accessed on their own or through Play's unique dashboard system.

There are currently five dashboards: Play, Search, Places, Music, and Send, with more to come as users ask for them. These dashboards group related apps and allow you to access them simultaneously in a truncated, list form -- for instance, the search dashboard returns results from Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Bing, and any other Kinoma app you choose to add. In addition to those useful dashboards, the software improves the UX by simply speeding things up. It's a lightweight platform with small apps (many are only 100 - 150KB in size) that launch quickly and run smoothly. Still not sold? Head on past the break to see Peter walk us through a little bit of what Kinoma can do, and read on to learn more about the platform.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/13/m...m-for-android/