Review of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

The veil of the latest operating system was lifted at a dual presentation from Google and Samsung in Hong Kong. I suggest that you familiarize yourself with the key improvements in Android 4.0 before we move on to a detailed overview.

• - the system is optimized for use on both tablets and smartphones;
• - a completely new interface with an updated font style, called "Roboto", improved animations, transition effects, multitouch controls and live wallpapers;
• - improved multitasking;
• - new panel for favorites;
• - Improved lock screen, as well as the ability to unlock by scanning a face;
• - improved notification panel;
• - the ability to edit the size of the widgets;
• - built-in system of screenshots of the screen;
• - improved text and voice typing;
• - built-in monitoring and control of traffic usage;
• - People application;
• - improvements in Calendar and Gmail applications;
• - added functions of anonymous viewing and saving pages for offline reading in a web browser;
• - function of voice and video mail;
• - Improved camera performance by integrating Face Detection and Panoramic View;
• - improved performance of the camcorder thanks to the functions of continuous autofocusing, frame capture during recording and time lapse mode;
• - new gallery design with built-in photo editing application;
• - implementation of the NFC interface;
• - Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth HDP support.

It should also be understood that Ice Cream Sandwich is not just another update, of which there have already been many - it is a huge step forward for the entire Android operating system. It absorbed all the best from Gingerbread and Honeycomb, solving the problem of different display of the interface on smartphones and tablets. Also, Android 4.0 aims to unify the hardware of devices and thereby make life easier for software developers. In other words, Ice Cream Sandwich fixes one of the biggest flaws in the Android operating system - over-segmentation of its devices.

Interface

As always, a huge amount of attention has been paid to the redesign of the interface. Overall, it looks the most like a tablet Honeycomb with its dark and blue tones. Immediately, we draw your attention to the new Roboto font, which has come to replace the old Droid. The first "touches" to the interface reveal its new effects and animations. It immediately becomes noticeable that the principle of swipe-control of elements, previously used in the TouchWiz interface of Samsung smartphones, has become more widely used here and is found almost everywhere. For example, to remove an item from a list, just slide your finger across it in the horizontal direction, as if crossing it out.

We can say that the new interface has taken a position somewhere between classic iOS and innovative, and somewhere even futuristic Windows Phone 7. But we all know one main advantage of Android - when the interface gets bored, we will change it.

Multitasking

Also on the list of benefits is an improvement in the multitasking mechanism.

We have already seen this in Honeycomb, as well as in the latest versions of Symbian OS - Anna and Belle. You press the new Recent Apps key and you are presented with a list of all open applications. Each is shown as a small screenshot of its current view. Such technology will help you quickly see in what state a particular program was left. Again, you can stop unnecessary processes by simply sliding them off the tape.

New notification bar

The notification panel now displays a missed event icon next to the text. For example, next to the information about the missed call there will now be a photo of the subscriber who called you.Also from here you can directly control your music player without even switching to it. Another interesting innovation is the ability to view incoming events without having to unlock your smartphone.

You can delete notifications by crossing them with your finger from the list thanks to swipe technology.

Improved unlock screen

Without unlocking your smartphone, you can now immediately open the Camera application. We have already seen this in the popular interfaces of smartphones from HTC and Samsung, and now it will be on all devices that will receive an update to Ice Cream Sandwich.

But, unfortunately, you cannot use a shortcut to any other program in this way. The developers apparently considered the Camera application to be the only necessary and deserving quick launch. It's a pity, because many would like to put something of their own there, as they used to do in the Sense interface from HTC.

Face scan

This is perhaps one of the most interesting innovations. The front camera has the function of identifying the owner of the smartphone. As soon as she identifies you by comparing you with a previously taken photo, the phone will instantly unlock. The method is good for people who store important information on the phone, because it eliminates the need to remember any passwords and is a fairly reliable obstacle in the way of ill-wishers.

Folders

This is not to say that folders are such an innovation in Ice Cream Sandwich, because they existed in previous versions of the operating system. However, before that, the mechanism was frankly crudely implemented. He lacked some kind of intuition, simplicity. Now the situation has changed somewhat. You can create folders by simply dragging and dropping shortcuts on top of each other and just as easily add new icons to already created folders. We first saw something like this in iOS, then we observed it as part of the interface in Xperia smartphones from Sony Ericsson.

The application dock, which is located at the bottom of the screen, has been modified. Now you can place four shortcuts to your favorite programs next to the button to open the application menu. In fact, you can even drag there a folder from the desktop, which may contain some other shortcuts, i.e. comes out quite conveniently. This dock will invariably remain in its place no matter what desktop you are on.

Widgets

Editable widgets have also migrated from Honeycomb to the new OS. It's even surprising that tablet owners were the first to get the ability to resize them to better distribute the display space, and only now the function is appearing on phones.

An interesting feature is also a new additional tab in the applications menu, which displays the view of all widgets installed on the phone.

Contact list

Unlike the rest of the interface components, the contact list has undergone perhaps the most dramatic changes. In fact, it is no longer in the form in which we are used to seeing it. There is now an app called People. An even deeper integration into social networks catches the eye. For example, now the status of your friends from GTalk is available to you, and for each contact you can add his belonging to a particular social network, be it Facebook or Google+. Thus, your kind of circles of communication will be created for each of them. Add to this the significantly increased contact photos.

Also, the Quick contacts feature, previously found in the Optimus smartphone interface from LG, has become available and slightly modified. By clicking on the line of a contact, you will immediately see its image, and a context menu containing shortcuts for a direct call and sending a message for this subscriber will become available.

Posts

The mechanism for writing text messages has remained largely unchanged compared to Honeycomb due to the lack of any flaws. However, the text correction and substitution systems have been slightly improved.The new application can now easily identify not only grammatical errors, but also double characters, missing letters and extra spaces. In a word, the mechanism has become more intelligent.

Voice dialing can convert voice to text much better and now there is no time limit, i.e. you can dictate to the phone huge chunks of the necessary text. After the conversion is completed, the system will underline the words that, in its opinion, could have been converted with errors, and you will only have to slightly correct the resulting text.

Email

The developers did a bit of work on the look of email as well. The application has become more intuitive, and at the same time it has taken on a more businesslike look. Of the innovations, the display of the subscriber's photo immediately catches the eye when adding a recipient. Also, directly from the email application, you can add a screenshot of the screen to the message. In some cases, this option can be very useful.

Web browser

A lot of interesting and useful changes have happened in the browser. In addition to the fact that it has become faster, more beautiful and more economical in terms of the consumption of system resources, several more improvements have appeared. Firstly, it is synchronization with Google Chrome. What has long been used by the browsers Opera Mini and Opera Mobile (the Opera Link service) has finally come to Android. This is definitely a huge step forward. Secondly, an incognito mode has appeared, in which the history of visits to Internet pages is not kept. The need for such a function is questionable, because, in fact, a smartphone is a purely personal item and in most cases there is no need to hide your web preferences from anyone. For tablets, anonymous mode is much more suitable. Thirdly, we note the new ability to view full versions of sites instead of their mobile-optimized copies, as well as the function of offline reading of deferred pages. Both services migrated, you guessed it, again from Opera Mobile.

Like Task Manager, the browser displays a ribbon containing images of open site tabs. It is also called by pressing the Recent Apps key, and you can close unnecessary pages by simply sliding them off the ribbon.

Camera

With the Ice Cream Sandwich update, the Camera app has also been updated. It now offers a completely different interface, with the addition of several useful features. Among them, we note face detection, panoramic view, image stabilization, as well as focusing by pressing the screen. The shutter and photo processing times are now rapidly approaching zero, which significantly increases the speed of photographing.

The camcorder has also been enriched with useful additions. Now, while shooting, in addition to ongoing autofocus, you will have access to zoom and the ability to take individual photos without interrupting the video. Image stabilization is present as in the camera.

conclusions

Well, Ice Cream Sandwich is clearly revolutionary in the development of the Android operating system. And the reason is an absolute victory over its eternal shortcomings, which have been trailing behind it since version 1.6. The new version is designed to curtail the huge fragmentation of Android devices on the market, which often played a cruel joke with users and developers, because how often they came across incompatibility of applications with this or that device. This led to the fact that many programs and games still exist in several versions for different hardware characteristics of smartphones. The second problem solved is the interface and native apps. Ice cream Sandwich OS has made a huge breakthrough, absorbing the best of many existing operating systems and their user interfaces. And such applications as Camera, Browser, Phonebook, etc. almost immediately replaced by more functional analogs.Now the need for this, I think, should disappear, because the new Google Chrome browser, a unique unlock screen, an application for contacts People (People), as well as revised and improved Calendar, Gmail and Mobile Office represent a completely new stunning interface that will delight many users ...

F.ua store offers its customers a wide range of smartphones running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Popular models include: HTC One V, Samsung I9250 Galaxy Nexus, LG P705 Optimus L7, etc.