A deeper look at Android 4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2011
    Android 4.0 sold me at webOS cards and hardware acceleration. The former was a pipedream come true, and the latter was desperately needed.
  • HC
    edited October 2011
    Great article. One of the best I have read on ICS. Makes me yearn for it even more :)
  • edited October 2011
    Good article. Google is doing great. Good hardware will make Android phines & tablets a deadily alternative to Apple.
  • edited October 2011
    This story is awesome!
  • edited October 2011
    Can't wait to get ICS on my nexus s. Here's going the hardware acceleration benefits are seen here too.
  • edited October 2011
    I'm sorry, but adding a dock to the bottom of the home screen (wherever did they come up with that?) with new butt ugly icons, making the Google search bar invisible, resizable widgets, and adding a more obvious task killer is only enough to make the most ardent fandroids happy. Regular people are going to see things like this, face unlock, and beam, and they are simply not going to be that impressed. The Galaxy Nexus is on track to be a non-starter like the rest of the Nexus line. The truth hurts.
  • edited October 2011
    This is the phone that will make me switch from my iPhone 4. It has everything I wanted. Apple is screwed. The iPhone4S was a huge disappointment with no 4G speed and still the super slow 3G, and no NFC. Goodbye Apple and good riddance.
  • djmephdjmeph Detroit Icrontian
    edited October 2011
    Woody wrote:
    I'm sorry, but adding a dock to the bottom of the home screen (wherever did they come up with that?) with new butt ugly icons, making the Google search bar invisible, resizable widgets, and adding a more obvious task killer is only enough to make the most ardent fandroids happy. Regular people are going to see things like this, face unlock, and beam, and they are simply not going to be that impressed. The Galaxy Nexus is on track to be a non-starter like the rest of the Nexus line. The truth hurts.

    The only thing that hurts is my head after reading your response. You gloss over the least important new features with a negative tone, and completely ignore some of the more notable improvements that were made. The truth must be hurting you more than it hurts me.

    Mark my words. Applying the WebOS card system to tabbed browsing is something people will be talking about once more people are using Android 4.0. Mobile tabbed browsing has seen little improvement, and no one has quite figured it out yet. It needed a visual method for scrolling between tabs and easily closing them. The uniformity between the task manager, notifications and browser tabs was a great idea, and I think it's very possible that this will become a part of the API that developers will be able to use in their own apps in the future.

    Aside from the Task Manager and Quick Response, I didn't find that any of these new features were groundbreaking in any way, in fact, a lot of them are obligatory updates meant to keep Android competitive with the other platforms. What was most interesting to me was the importance they put on organization and integration. Apple seemed to be focusing on this in their recent press conference as well. It will be hard to tell if either of these companies will hit their mark in either of these areas, but I think we can all expect to see integration and organization features improve with the next versions of platforms. (iOS 6? Android: Chaco Taco?)
  • djmephdjmeph Detroit Icrontian
    edited October 2011
    I'm actually getting a raging boner thinking about the possibilities of the task manager format becoming available in the API. I can see an immediate need for it in an office suite, to switch between open documents.
  • edited October 2011
    I never liked the Android platform, it doesn't not have a friendly interface compared with IOS of the Iphone. Hopefully Nokia will come up with interesting devices in cooperation with Microsoft this week which can offer a good alternative to Android and Ios phones. I am waiting for something new, something different and most of all more advanced.
  • edited October 2011
    Okay, you are looking for something more advanced, yet you want something as easy as dirt? That's a bit of a conundrum. That's just like a person dreaming of being a computer troubleshooter, and not wanting to have to learn anything about computers. IOS may be easy to use, but it is also disgustingly limited on what the user can do. Sorry, but if one had an iPhone with a limited data plan, then why in the hell would you want to have to use the cloud for all of the data that apple is too stingy to let you use?
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2011
    I don't know how much simpler Android could be. Turn it on, press icons, open menu to find more icons, drag icons to desktop, find more apps in the market and press "install."

    You know, just like any other computer interface we've been using for, oh, thirty years. Or, hey, like pretty much any other smartphone.

    It's not that complicated.
  • As a webOS early adopter, fanboy, and recent Android nOOb, I'm thrilled to hear that some of the more brilliant features of webOS are creeping in.
  • edited October 2011
    Great article. As a former webOS original Palm Pre owner/user, happy to see the card system being implemented in Android, along with swipe away. Mainly, what excites me is hardware acceleration. Hoping it'll make a drastic improvement on the lag perception on my Nexus S 4G.
  • I just can't find ANYTHING that could be remotely described as a full user guide for ICS. How can this possibly be? Google isn't short of a penny or two and they have a full development team on ICS. So how come the best I can find is little more than an overview of the features? I can't think of any other product be it hardware or software that doesn't come with documentation - it's part of the requirement for a professionally developed product isn't it?

    Do we have to wait for an "Idiot's Guide to Android ICS" to appear?

    I got a Transformer Prime recently which came with a user manual but of course this gave little info about the OS itself. Hopefully I'm missing something obvious but if so I must be remarkably blind and/or stupid.

    (Rant over)
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    The user manual for each Android device contains a full walkthrough. Android in and of itself is not an end-user product. The device that it runs on is, and each device may have something different to say about how their version of Android is supposed to work.
  • djmephdjmeph Detroit Icrontian
    Where do you find the walkthrough if it doesn't come with the device?
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    You could download any old PDF from one of the ICS devices. :)
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