So,
the entire wait was worthwhile at last it seems! Going by the
specifications, Android's
latest avatar, the Ice
Cream Sandwich
promises to be tasty. The latest revision also unites the best of
Gingerbread and Honeycomb and fulfills the vision or creating a
unified operating system for both the tablets as well as smartphones,
in addition to 29 other major improvements. Here, we have listed 12
major ones for you to see what to expect from Android v4 ICS.
New
virtual buttons instead of capacitive controls
The
first thing you are going to notice in handsets designed for Ice
Cream Sandwich is the absence of physical capacitive Back, Home, Menu
and Search buttons. These buttons have been replaced with a new
integrated system bar at the bottom of the screen with three
permanent virtual buttons – Back, Home and Recent Apps.
Enhanced
speed and performance
Speed
is what that matters in the age of HD games and high end
applications. Hence, to take full advantage of high end dual core
processors and complement it fully, the Android 4.0 Ice Cream
Sandwich comes optimized for multi-core processors.
Data
management tool
A
cool new addition, Android 4.0 also comes packed with a built-in app
that lets you keep a tab on your data consumption, allowing you to
set download limits to save you costly overcharges
Integrated
screenshot capture
Now
this was something which was sorely missed until now. But better late
than never! With Ice Cream Sandwich, you can capture screenshot of
your device with ease. Just press the power and volume down button to
capture screenshot of your phone’s screen. Easy eh?
Resizable
icons
This
addition comes with the merger of Android Honeycomb and Gingerbread
versions. Left with one single OS to run both tablets and
smartphones, it was imperative for Android to come up with such a
feature to optimise icon size according to the screen size. Sounds
good if you want to save some display real estate!
Better
voice integration
With
Siri becoming a rage and main driving force behind continued sales of
Apple’iPhone 4S,
Android was in threat of being left behind in this vital arena.
Hence, with ICS, Android has added real-time voice processing feature
called Instant Voice. Expect delays no more as all the chores of
sending voice data to cloud servers and displaying the processed
results done away with. Now you just need to press the button and
text starts flowing on your screen like magic! Things may get even
better with the launch of Google’s own Mejel
personal voice assistant for Android devices sometime early next
year.
Face
Unlock feature
Another
security addition after introduction of pattern lock, the face unlock
feature adds another convenient way of unlocking your device. After
all, there can’t be an easier way of unlocking you phone than
staring at it anyway! The lock can be set up by going to security tab
in settings menu.
New
web browser, no Flash
Web
browser has also been revamped significantly and now supports up to
16 browser tabs at once. You can also set up sync with your Google
Chrome browser to import your bookmarks on your Android device.
However, Flash is not supported until now but an update for the same
should be available soon. ICS is expected to be the last major
Android version to support Flash and developer websites are abuzz
with rumours that Android 5.0, called Jelly Bean for now would ship
without Flash and won’t be supporting it anyway.
Modern
Roboto font
With
ICS update, Google has also tried to silence critics who slam Android
for having unattractive and downright utilitarian interface by
introducing a new main font family called ‘Roboto’, designed for
better legibility on high resolution screens found in premium Android
devices like Samsung Galaxy Nexus etc.
Improved
multi-tasking
Multi-tasking
also gets a facelift in Android 4.0. The home icon on the control bar
takes the place of home key in Android 4.0. Long pressing the home
icon reveals a Honeycomb style list of running applications with
their small thumbnails. To remove, simply tap and hold on the
thumbnail and swipe it horizontally across the screen.
Improved
camera app
Though camera UI has largely been left untouched, it still comes loaded with
some badly needed updates. For starters, the shutter lag has been
eliminated to a huge extent, so no more lags with taking pictures.
Then there is the single motion Panorama mode, which lets you take
wide panorama shots by simply swivelling your phone from left to
right with the software doing the rest. Now that’s some really cool
stuff! Other improvements include an image editor, special effects
and some optimisation camera UI.
NFC
support
We
have seen NFC
on several devices now but Google has now come up with a stock app to
utilise the technology to full extent. The Android Beam feature lets
you transmit data to other phones running Android OS more securely
than Bluetooth, though the range is short. Android Beam enables you
to share anything, ranging from contacts and Web pages to apps and
YouTube videos and play video games too.
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