It’s here! Android 4.0, code named Ice Cream Sandwich, was announced Tuesday night by Google and Samsung at a press gathering in Hong Kong. The first phone to run Android 4 is the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which will be available next month. But the good news is that the SDK is available right now at the Android Developer web site. Let’s take a look at the top features in the new operating system.
1. Ice Cream Sandwich has a more consistent look and feel than its predecessors. Designer Matias Duarte (former designer of WebOS) says that "While people like and need Android, they didn’t love Android". So he gave the user interface a complete makeover to make it "enchanting, easy, and powerful". New widgets, new gestures, context sensitive action bars, more discoverable commands - these are just the tip of the iceberg.
2. The Android 4.0 OS has new system font. It sports a new type face called "Roboto" which was designed especially for high resolution screens like the one found on the Galaxy Nexus.
3. Now you can hold down the power and volume down buttons to capture a screenshot of the currently running application.
4. The Ice Cream Sandwich has got a whole gamut of home screen improvements. New features for phones include resizable widgets with stacks and scrolling for richer information at your fingertips. Other new features include the ability to create a folder by dragging one icon on top of another, and a customizable quick action bar at the bottom of the screen. You can press a button in any screen to see recent apps and swipe them to the side to close them.
5. Earlier with Android 2.x, 3.x, and iOS 5, you had to press a button to start recording, say what you have to say, and when you stop talking the phone sends the entire recording to the cloud. Servers in the cloud chew on it for a little while and then send the text or commands back to your phone. Android 4 gets rid of most of those delays with a cool feature called Instant Voice. Now you press the button and start talking and the text starts appearing while you are still talking.
With all these features and more, the Android 4.0 is sure to hit the market big.
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