Google officially announced Ice Cream Sandwich today, its follow-up to Android 2.3 Gingerbread for Android phones.
The next-stage operating system will finally give Android phone owners a taste of Android Honeycomb 3.0 by bringing smartphones Honeycomb's holographic user interface, more multitasking, and a new apps launcher.
What's more, with Ice Cream Sandwich, which will launch in the fourth quarter, Google finally addresses the fragmentation issues that have plagued the adolescent operating system.
Since we only got a glimpse, it's tough to rate the OS so far, but from the looks of it, Ice Cream Sandwich will advance Android smartphone capabilities by leaps and bounds, versus the more-incremental updates we saw with Gingerbread. We'll be looking forward to seeing hardware and software unified on a single mobile platform, similar to Apple's move in consolidating its mobile products under iOS. Here's what we'll expect to see.
Unified OS
While Honeycomb was designed for tablets, Ice Cream Sandwich will be a cross-platform OS, or as Google put it in this morning's keynote, "One OS that runs everywhere." This means that Ice Cream Sandwich will run on tablets and smartphones, and possibly on other Android devices as well. As a result, Ice Cream Sandwich will bring all of Honeycomb's coveted features to Android phones. That includes user-interface refinements such as multitasking, a "holographic" user interface, a scrolling list of apps, an application launcher, and richer resizable widgets.
Ice Cream Sandwich phones will also get access to the newly announced movie rental service in the Android Market (along with all Android phones 2.2 and above), Google Music access, and compatibility with hardware accessories like keyboards and game controllers.
Fragmentation be gone
With Ice Cream Sandwich, Google is also working hard to shrink fragmentation. Developers will get the new, open-source APIs and a framework that will help them optimize apps for different devices. This will allow the same program to run on most Android phones and tablets of different screen sizes and specs.This was one of developers' previous complaints.
Although it's not an Android feature, Google has also partnered up with various carriers and manufacturers--all four nationwide carriers, HTC, Samsung, etc.--to promise that all new devices must run the latest versions of Android for at least the first 18 months. Of course, there are still potential hardware limitations, and older devices might not be included in this update. However, it's still a very welcome effort by Google to help reduce fragmentation issues.
Facial tracking
Ice Cream Sandwich will also bring with it an OpenGL head-tracking system that is able to track facial features. Google demonstrated this with a Virtual Cam Operator app at the Google I/O keynote, where the camera automatically tracked and focused in on the person who was talking.
Not a whole lot more is known about Ice Cream Sandwich at this time, not even official word on Ice Cream Sandwich's version number (Android 2.4, Android 3.2?). There's also no documentation up yet on Google's site to provide more clues, but we'll be searching anyway.
The next-stage operating system will finally give Android phone owners a taste of Android Honeycomb 3.0 by bringing smartphones Honeycomb's holographic user interface, more multitasking, and a new apps launcher.
What's more, with Ice Cream Sandwich, which will launch in the fourth quarter, Google finally addresses the fragmentation issues that have plagued the adolescent operating system.
Since we only got a glimpse, it's tough to rate the OS so far, but from the looks of it, Ice Cream Sandwich will advance Android smartphone capabilities by leaps and bounds, versus the more-incremental updates we saw with Gingerbread. We'll be looking forward to seeing hardware and software unified on a single mobile platform, similar to Apple's move in consolidating its mobile products under iOS. Here's what we'll expect to see.
Unified OS
While Honeycomb was designed for tablets, Ice Cream Sandwich will be a cross-platform OS, or as Google put it in this morning's keynote, "One OS that runs everywhere." This means that Ice Cream Sandwich will run on tablets and smartphones, and possibly on other Android devices as well. As a result, Ice Cream Sandwich will bring all of Honeycomb's coveted features to Android phones. That includes user-interface refinements such as multitasking, a "holographic" user interface, a scrolling list of apps, an application launcher, and richer resizable widgets.
Ice Cream Sandwich phones will also get access to the newly announced movie rental service in the Android Market (along with all Android phones 2.2 and above), Google Music access, and compatibility with hardware accessories like keyboards and game controllers.
Fragmentation be gone
With Ice Cream Sandwich, Google is also working hard to shrink fragmentation. Developers will get the new, open-source APIs and a framework that will help them optimize apps for different devices. This will allow the same program to run on most Android phones and tablets of different screen sizes and specs.This was one of developers' previous complaints.
Although it's not an Android feature, Google has also partnered up with various carriers and manufacturers--all four nationwide carriers, HTC, Samsung, etc.--to promise that all new devices must run the latest versions of Android for at least the first 18 months. Of course, there are still potential hardware limitations, and older devices might not be included in this update. However, it's still a very welcome effort by Google to help reduce fragmentation issues.
Facial tracking
Ice Cream Sandwich will also bring with it an OpenGL head-tracking system that is able to track facial features. Google demonstrated this with a Virtual Cam Operator app at the Google I/O keynote, where the camera automatically tracked and focused in on the person who was talking.
Not a whole lot more is known about Ice Cream Sandwich at this time, not even official word on Ice Cream Sandwich's version number (Android 2.4, Android 3.2?). There's also no documentation up yet on Google's site to provide more clues, but we'll be searching anyway.
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