Google officially unveils Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich | preview | download

Google has officially unveiled its delicious Ice Cream Sandwich, along with the new Galaxy Nexus phone today. Also known as Android version 4.0, the Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) offers many user interface improvement and new features. A quick glance from the preview of the ICS being demoed on stage, we can see that Google has placed much effort to make the user interface more streamline. 

From the lockscreen, you can now unlock the phone by using facial recognition via the front facing camera. Swiping to the left on the lockscreen will give you immediate access to your camera. Plus, you can even access the notification window from the lockscreen, which is pretty convenient to check messages without the need to unlock the screen first. Similar to CyanogenMod, the ICS notifications can be easily dismiss by swiping from left to right. You can also see your contact pictures inside next to the notification.

Android 4.0 has given a new breath for the homescreen. With the button-less design in mind, the Google Developers have brought the System bar from Honeycomb to let the user to navigate to Back, Home and Recent Apps. 

Google officially unveils Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

October 19, 2011 by Lim Pei Hao

19 October 2011 – Google has officially unveiled its delicious Ice Cream Sandwich, along with the new Galaxy Nexus phone today. Also known as Android version 4.0, the Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) offers many user interface improvement and new features. A quick glance from the preview of the ICS being demoed on stage, we can see that Google has placed much effort to make the user interface more streamline.

User Interface improvements

From the lockscreen, you can now unlock the phone by using facial recognition via the front facing camera. Swiping to the left on the lockscreen will give you immediate access to your camera. Plus, you can even access the notification window from the lockscreen, which is pretty convenient to check messages without the need to unlock the screen first. Similar to CyanogenMod, the ICS notifications can be easily dismiss by swiping from left to right. You can also see your contact pictures inside next to the notification.

Android 4.0 has given a new breath for the homescreen. With the button-less design in mind, the Google Developers have brought the System bar from Honeycomb to let the user to navigate to Back, Home and Recent Apps.

Creating an app folder is easier than before, just drag any app from the homescreen on top of another app will instantly create a folder. You can later rename the folder and arrange the app within the folder. Furthermore, you can group your favorite contacts inside a folder too.

Now there is a widget category inside the app drawer. Widgets can be inserted to the homescreen by long press inside the widget drawer, which then the size of the widget could be resized. The revamped keyboard layout has less intrusive suggestion, and allows you to drag text around more easily within the messages. The keyboard also supports speech-to-text in real time, as you can see text being input as you speak.

Taking screenshot is a default feature in ICS by simple pressing the home key and volume down button simultaneously.

People

 

ICS also introduces a new People app. At a glance, it looks really similar with Windows Phone 7 Metro UI, with your contacts’ head popping up in the square tiles. Tapping on the tiles reveals more information about your contact and even integrates all your contact's social networking. There is even a "Me" profile page which you can choose what to share and which social sites you want to link to.
Web Browser

 

The new web browser now supports incognito browsing. Plus, it will be able to sync your favorite bookmarks from the desktop version of Chrome. Plus, it allows you to view any webpage in full desktop version or simply save a copy of the webpage for offline use. Google has improved the tabbing user layout which looks like a magazine style. You can simply close any of your unwanted tabs by simply swiping from left to right.

Data Usage

 
 

 One of the useful features in Android 4.0 is the data usage. It works like Google Analytic except it tracks data usage from all apps. It provides you the current sum of data used in a chart. The chart also shows you how much data left before you hit your data quota. The data quota can be adjusted by simply dragging the orange bar. You can even set an alert you about to reach your data quota. Data Usage also reveals how much data is expensed on the foreground and background of an app in a pie chart.

Camera and Gallery app

 

The new camera app now offers continuous focus and zero shutter lag exposure which allows you to snap photos back-to-back instantly. The continuous focus also applies when you are recording a video, which allows you to zoom and take snapshot of the video when you are recording a video. It has built-in face detection and supports snapping panorama photo by simply capture photos from left to right and the app will stitch the photos together for you.

 

The Gallery app has a new magazine layout, which gives you a bigger thumbnail to preview your photos and videos. It also comes with a photo editor for you to crop and rotate pictures, set levels, remove red eyes, add effects, and others.

Android Beam

 

Android Beam is a NFC feature which allows you share your content such as apps, contacts, music, photo and videos with another NFC Android device. It can be done by simply tapping two Android phones together. Sharing could be done even one is running a game on the phone. By tapping together, the other device will receive the market link of the game is running on the first phone.

There are plenty more minor features and improvements of the Android Ice Cream Sandwich that we deliberately did not cover, and saving them for another day. Nevertheless, the Android 4.0 certainly look very promising, we can’t wait to see ICS running on any of the existing Android devices in the market today.

The SDK of the Android Ice Cream Sandwich for developers is available for now. Hit here to download.