I'm not an Android dev (yet), but does it matter much outside of the UI? Honeycomb isn't open source, so 2.* is all they can use without talking to Google.
Seeing as how Ice Cream Sandwich is meant to better unify the APIs, I don't mind if they skip Honeycomb as long as they do get on track eventually.
It matters a bit. With 2.2 (Froyo), they added a JIT Compiler that, in my experience (upgrading from 2.1 to 2.2), resulted in a drastic performance improvement.
[Edit: This was on my phone. Sibling response from stonemetal provides interesting counterpoint.]
When the nook went from 2.1 to 2.2 there wasn't a noticeable difference in responsiveness. So my guess is it was a big benchmark win but not a big usability win unless you were trying to do number crunching on a tablet.
I had noticeably less UI stutter and freezes going from 2.1 to 2.2 on my Nexus One. 2.3 made it a new phone - the low pause GC really makes a difference for UI responsiveness.
yes android 2.2 and 2.3 introduces significant performance improvements, that are definitely noticeable. Just moving from froyo to gingerbread, feels like a new phone.
Seeing as how Ice Cream Sandwich is meant to better unify the APIs, I don't mind if they skip Honeycomb as long as they do get on track eventually.