An early iteration of the next music app for Android has leaked, but it doesn't yet show the important feature updates that were demonstrated at the Google I/O conference in May. Improving Android's music playback could help Google and its Android partners compete with Apple's products, which inherited their music capabilities from the iPod.
This music player will supposedly ship with Android 3.0, or Honeycomb--a tablet-specific version of the platform that Motorola is already touting for its upcoming Android tablet. The leak was posted to the XDA Developers' Forum, and a user posted a video to YouTube, claiming that it's the music app shown at I/O 2010. The video leaked app was picked up earlier by Engadget.
The app doesn't offer any clues whether Honeycomb will actually include a Google music store or online music storage and sync service. Google has apparently been approaching the record labels with big checks in hopes that they'll sign off on a "music locker" service, and also could be using the acquisition of Simplify Media to let users stream songs from their computers over the Internet to their Android devices.
